Editorial | Specific body for rebuilding

There is no question that Hurricane Melissa severely battered western Jamaica.

Indeed, even as the assessment becomes more granular, what is known so far of the impact of the Category 5 storm is staggering. An estimated 135,000 homes were either damaged or destroyed. Over 900,000 persons across five parishes were affected.

Public infrastructure wasn’t spared. Schools, hospitals and clinics were levelled or badly mangled by the hurricane’s 185 mph winds. Floods and landslides, induced by Melissa’s rains, undermined roads and bridges.

The Government’s latest estimate of the cost of the damage is US$10 billion. That is over 43 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP, using the IMF’s measure of the size of the island’s economy. When the counting is completed, including the hurricane’s indirect impact on the economy, the figure will be significantly higher.

Jamaica, over the next several years, has a major reconstruction job to do, requiring the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars.

What isn’t yet clear is how the administration plans to approach this rebuilding, despite Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness’ appointment of committees to coordinate the receipt and distribution of hurricane relief and financial assistance to the island.

The Gleaner welcomes Dr Holness’ pledge that “every dollar spent will be accounted for” and efficiently allocated. However, the early interventions to restore a semblance of normality to western Jamaica and to ease citizens’ immediate post-hurricane circumstances, are far from the national reconstruction project that will be required to restore infrastructure with the resilience required for the extreme weather-related events that are becoming the new normal with global warming.

MULTI-YEAR PROGRAMME

The scale of the exercise will require, by this newspaper’s estimates, the expenditure of US$3-4 billion over the next three to five years. That project can’t be managed – at least not with the necessary intensity, urgency and efficiency, transparency and oversight – solely by the Government’s existing bureaucracy. There is a shortage of, and weaknesses in, institutional capacity.

In that regard, The Gleaner repeats its proposal for the creation, via legislation, with specific sunset clause for the entity, of a National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). Its job would be to, as we suggested previously, “plan, procure, execute, and account for, a multi-year reconstruction programme”.

The NRA must have operational independence, but would report to Parliament via a cross-party oversight committee.

It must have highly competent management and skilled technical staff, with its operations overseen by an independent board of qualified and capable people with backgrounds in business, finance, engineering, climate adaptation, civil-society institutions, including faith-based organisations, as well as the diaspora.

In the context of the overall reconstruction, The Gleaner also reiterates its suggestion for a special carve-out for education, with a specific portion of aid/rebuilding inflows being earmarked for the sector.

In other words, Melissa provides an opportunity for the long talked-about reset of an education system whose output is highly uneven and delivers too few graduates capable of giving Jamaica a competitive advantage in an increasingly technology-driven global economy.

Its historic underperformance notwithstanding, the education sector has, in recent years, endured multiple shocks that have stressed the teaching-and-learning environment. The COVID-19 pandemic kept students out of classrooms for two academic years, exacerbating existing education deficits. Last year, Hurricane Beryl side-swiped Jamaica’s south coast, damaging scores of schools. Now, Melissa has done even greater damage to far more schools, including many that were hit by Beryl.

These institutions must be put back into operation urgently, with temporary fixes to school plants, or the construction of temporary facilities, ahead of longer-term, but quick, resilient reconstruction.

DEDICATED FINANCING

But the rebuilding in education mustn’t only be physical. It must also be institutional, including the professional development of teachers and significant adjustment to school curricula.

Climate change, including a focus on the “green” jobs that will be relevant for surviving in a hotter climate, must be part of what is taught in schools. So, too, must be disaster preparedness, resilience, industrial linkages and entrepreneurship.

Doing this, plus building back classrooms, libraries, science and computer labs – all the necessities for delivering modern education – will require, if it is to be done with urgency, dedicated financing.

It is why we proposed the creation of a School Education Recovery & Resilience Fund (SERRF) as a subset of our suggested National Reconstruction Fund (NRF). Up to 30 per cent of overall redevelopment inflows – capped over time at the optimal amount needed for the overhaul of the sector – would be ring-fenced for education, going into the SERRF.

The school and education fund would be managed by a National Education Recovery Board (NERB), under the umbrella of the education ministry. Like the National Reconstruction Authority, the NERB would have effective oversight by a similarly constructed expert board.

Collaborating with the National Education Trust and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), the SERRF would provide grants to, and oversight of, education reconstruction and innovation projects.