THE top brass of the St Elizabeth Homecoming Foundation – drivers of the social, economic and cultural development of the parish – have questioned the positioning of the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) as the foremost agency to lead Jamaica’s post-Hurricane Melissa rebuilding, arguing that the far more established Urban Development Corporation (UDC) should have been given the mandate.

Director of the foundation, Ambassador Byron Blake, who is a former deputy secretary general of Caricom, said too much is hanging on NaRRA, the true shape of which is yet to be seen. He was speaking during the Jamaica Observer’s most recent Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s Corporate Area headquarters.

“My first take on it is, until I saw something coming to the Parliament, I didn’t know what this thing is about. My second take is that the man who takes up as CEO [Major General Antony Anderson], about six months after the disaster says, ‘I need three months to get my administrative structures, and I need another three months, so I am not going to begin to operate really until the end of 2026.’ The gentleman basically said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have a plan,’ ” Blake asserted.

He said that stance by NaRRA’s new head is understandable.

“He cannot have plans because he has not, and nobody has, been in the area to decide what the content of that plan should be,” said Blake.

“What should have been happening is that people should have been talking to, and developing, and working out what the content of the plan is so [that] this behemoth – [which] can now bulldoze throughout everywhere – could move. But there’s no plan; and he’s not going to be in a position to operate until six months after, which incidentally would be five months from the beginning of the third hurricane season,” Blake told the forum.

In November last year, following the passage of Hurricane Melissa on October 28, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness announced that NaRRA would be established to lead, coordinate, fast-track, and oversee national rebuilding efforts. He said the entity is designed to eliminate bureaucracy, fragmentation, and project delays. In May this year, the same month the NaRRA Act was passed, the prime minister sought to distinguish between its work and that of the UDC , stating that both entities have distinct roles.

“The UDC has its mandate, and NaRRA has its mandate, and they must not come into conflict or in competition with each other. NaRRA cannot and was never intended to take over the functions of the UDC; it cannot displace the regular operations of the economy, including current and future projects of the UDC,” said Holness who described NaRRA as an executing mechanism designed to deliver projects with speed, efficiency, and accountability.

“NaRRA has to be agile, and it has to meet international accountability standards and pace,” the prime minister said then.

However, according to Dr Trevor Hamilton who operates Invercauld Hotel and Great House as well as the All American Institute of Medical Sciences in Black River, NaRRA is simply the sign of a ballooning Government.

“The economy is in a really tight situation. The economy is not growing, and Government is expanding. I see NaRRA as another example of expansion of the same small economy. If you read the mandate of the UDC, for example, they can do better than what NaRRA will be doing technically. UDC has a lot of capacity; I did the management audit for UDC and I know how many architects are down there, I know how many engineers are there. We did not have to reinvent another institution when we are consuming more and we owe more. UDC has a bigger and a better technical mandate than NaRRA,so I would ask, ‘Why are we creating another agency? Does it guarantee any new output?’ Every time we have a crisis, we create a new agency. It doesn’t make sense,” Hamilton argued.

He insisted that a better approach would have been to give what he sees as an “underutilised” UDC the “proper mandate” and funding to do the tasks now assigned to NaRRA. Aspects related to roadwork, he said, could be assigned to the National Works Agency if it is provided with the funding needed.

Hamilton also raised the issue of the learning curve that a new entity would need to master, and use as an excuse.

“You bring somebody new, they now have to go and find the same technical expertise and they [also] have the privilege of saying, ‘We are new, so we can make mistakes.’ UDC cannot claim newness,” he said. Furthermore the Foundation members argued that the UDC had been the entity to lead the island’s reconstruction after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.

There have been questions raised from other quarters, in the past, about the need for NaRRA. In addressing members of the Diaspora in April, Prime Minister Holness sought to explain the entity’s role and why it is needed.

“NaRRA is not a political entity. NaRRA is not there to be a long-term institution. NaRRA is an implementation machine. Its job is to take policy and convert it into outcomes. It’s not there to win friends. It’s not there to distribute political spoils,” he emphasised.

Holness also noted then that the authority will operate under a strict, time-bound mandate supported by a sunset clause, ensuring that it exists only for the period necessary to execute a defined set of transformative national projects. These include the rebuilding of critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and the development of new, climate-resilient communities.