LANDOWNERS in the Hurricane Melissa-ravaged areas of St Elizabeth slated for relocation are clamouring for clarity regarding the implications of the Government’s relocation programme for their assets.

In March this year, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness announced that his Administration had identified suitable parcels of land in Black River, St Elizabeth, for a comprehensive reconstruction and relocation programme to accommodate homes and businesses devastated by the Category 5 system which hit the island on October 28 last year.

The prime minister, who was making his contribution to the 2026/27 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives at the time, said the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) would begin the consultations and sensitisation with specific communities in Black River and along that corridor regarding acquisition and, where necessary, relocation.

That indication, according to Donna Parchment Brown, chair of the Elizabeth Homecoming Foundation, has sent property owners into panic mode.

“The UDC is involved, and you know what’s very interesting is how he framed it — UDC for land acquisition. The biggest fear that the people of St Elizabeth face today is that their properties will be acquired, and will be acquired in a way that they don’t have the autonomy and the authority to react to properly,” Parchment Brown told yesterday’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

She said that fear has motivated the foundation to create, in addition to its working committees, a legal working group. “And what the legal working group will do is, they will be looking at land, land acquisition, titling, people who have estates that have not been probated, and so on, to protect the interests that people have, but may not have legal foundation on to ensure that there is not a loss of assets to the people of the parish as a result of any planning or any initiative on the part of the Government of Jamaica through any of its agencies,” she told reporters and editors.

According to Parchment Brown, some of the very inquiries that have been made about ownership of land by State actors so far “have fed this anxiety on the part of business operators”.

“On the question of UDC and its role, I am saying that they have started off perhaps not on the best footing. What we have to recognise is that we have a set of people who are traumatised, they are grieving; when they look at their buildings and their homes, they are overwhelmed by grief, and that’s also with the communication breakdown in terms of access to the media through television and other things, because although electricity is mainly restored, if I don’t have a roof, I don’t have electricity in my home, so I can’t be watching television, and I can’t be listening to the news in electronic format,” she emphasised.

In the meantime, Kadian Myers Brown, attorney-at-law and president, Black River Chamber of Commerce, said the situation has left individuals in limbo as to whether they should rebuild or not.

“One of the things, even coming from a legal standpoint, you find that a lot of persons fear the lack of communication and the anxiety that is within this space; and when it comes on to land acquisition a lot of persons, they may not say it, but with the vagueness with which things are being expressed, one can only form the conclusion that they’re thinking about eminent domain [governed by the Land Acquisition Act] which grants the Government of Jamaica the power to compulsorily acquire private land for essential public purposes,” she pointed out.

Said Myers Brown, “We hear the utterances and these utterances are said without consultation so, though we hear by the way that the Government is not going to do certain things, we still feel, or the community, business and residential, they do have a lack of trust as it relates to what truly will happen at the end of the day.”

“So though UDC is charged with the responsibility of land acquisition, and then the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority will come thereafter, there is a big space, a big gap that we have no clue as to what really is going to happen,” she added.