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I want to acknowledge the Minister of Labour and Social Security, the Honourable Pearnel Charles. I won’t bother to say Junior because he is now more than walking in his father’s footstep. He’s walking in his own footsteps, leaving his own footprint, and he has really risen to the challenge of managing two major natural disasters back-to-back so good job, minister.

We have here with us the member of parliament. I know I have two other members of parliament here, but I’m going to say something because we have a tendency when we say MPs, we say Floyd Green, Member of Parliament for St Elizabeth but that is just because Minister Green is the Minister of Agriculture, so he’s minister for the breadbasket parish. We have Minister Green, Member of Parliament for Southwest St Elizabeth.

We have another minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Frank. Good to see you here.

And we have Andrew Morris, the new kid on the block. Good to see you here, Andrew.

We have the Honourable Donovan Williams. Now, if you talk to him, he will tell you that his constituency was also impacted by Melissa. In fact, if you talk to any MP, they will tell you their constituency was impacted by Melissa, but no, he’s not here to receive any of the benefits for his constituencies. He’s here as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

Mrs Dione Jennings, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and other permanent secretaries who may be here.

His Worship the Mayor. Mr Mayor, good to see.

And of course, the most important people in this ceremony, the beneficiaries of the ROOFS Programme.

Do you remember what the ROOFS acronym stands for? It’s the Restoration of Owner or Occupant Family Shelter, (ROOFS), quite appropriately coined.

Now, just to be quick about it, already, the government has distributed 1,234 grants under the ROOFS Programme, and they have done this by direct transfers, meaning it has gone from the bank account of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security into the bank accounts of the 1,234 beneficiaries, and that process will be ongoing. As we verify a bank account, we send you a text to tell you that it has hit your bank account. These are mainly persons who would’ve received minor damage but are also in the highly vulnerable category, primarily persons who are elderly, persons who are shut in, persons with disability, but the government has also issued so far to 50 persons who have been assessed as having severe damage. So far since we have started, which was just today, 50 persons have gotten their $500,000 grand to restore their roof.

While Pearnel was talking, a lady was so moved and she said, “thank God no more water coming in on me now”. I want it to be clearly known, you have a government that is very empathetic, meaning we not only feel sorry for you, which is sympathetic, but we understand your pain and therefore we act with urgency to help you to come out of that situation of pain. There are those who will try to paint the government as not caring and not doing anything, lie! We as a government has acted with speed and alacrity because we are a government that genuinely cares for the people.

There are those who will say they care and they will say it with the greatest of eloquence and theatrical pretence that you may even believe them, but as the Most Honourable Edward Seaga was once noted to have said, “too much criticism, it is one thing to say you care, it is another thing to have the cash to care”, and it is one thing that this government has been able to do, not just to say we care, but we have administered your affairs such that we have the cash to back up the care talk with action. And we have done it in COVID when we have put on the largest social transfer programme ever in the history, $48 billion of care for people who lost their jobs, lost their income, and we gave a grant to everybody just because we love you. Do you remember that? People lined up and went and collected their little grant.

I see one lady saying she didn’t get, but 400,000 Jamaicans got the grants, everything verified. Not one criticism, not one audit to say there was any corruption, not one. Then Beryl came and we gave over 16,000 grants. And I tell you something, I was in St Mary, I was in a little town there, and a man stopped me and he said, “Prime Minister, the government nah do nothing because me no get my grant for Beryl”, and I stopped and I reflect on it and I said the Monday before I sat with the minister at Cabinet, and I said, tell me how many persons got grants and he showed me the list that 16 plus thousand Jamaicans got grant, but one person never got and he stopped me in the middle of the town and at the top of his voice, because he didn’t get, the government no do nothing.

And that is the nature of the world we live in, it’s just how politics is, how people see their government. If the government never served me, then nothing didn’t get done, and we have to be cognizant of this fact because one loud voice saying negative can impact the perspective of the 16,000 who received but don’t say a word because nobody stopped me I the town to say I received. And indeed, they shouldn’t the go. That’s the government’s job. You get the grant, that’s how it is, but it is important that you manage the narrative and the mood because as a man thinketh so is he and if people start to think negative, they will start to act negative, and it is one thing that we must keep in these difficult times, times of disaster, it is an optimistic attitude, it’s a positive attitude. Because if you think that things are not going well, if you think that you are being unfairly treated and you are under distress and there is no hope, then that will be your reality. I know when I speak, I move people to ask questions.

There are a few things I want to say to you since I have you and you are all very attentive and want to ask questions and participate in the presentation. I just thought I would share this with you.

In the 65 years since 1960, some of you were born then. In fact, when I look at the audience, a lot of you weren’t born then. Maybe 10% of this audience was around in 1965. There have been seven hundred and ninety-nine recorded storms. Two hundred and one of those storms, almost 25% of those storms have occurred within the last 10 years. So, for 65 years, 800 storms, but a quarter of them, 201, have occurred in the last 10 years. But think about it, which administration then would have experienced the most storms? My administrations from 2016 to now. This administration has been impacted the most by storms. Let me give you another statistic.

There have been 34 Category 5 hurricanes since 1960.Fourteen of them have occurred since 2015. In other words, 40% of all Category 5 storms have taken place in the last 10 years. Which Government of Jamaica has ever had to deal with a Category 5 storm? Let’s take it one step further, which Government of Jamaica has ever had to deal with a pandemic? Which government of Jamaica has had to deal with a pandemic, a Category 3 hurricane, and then the following year, a Category 5 hurricane? None. And in all of them we have been able to respond and recover stronger. This is not an easy job. I see a lot of people pretending like they would want to do my job. They don’t know. They think maybe it just looks so easy, but it’s not easy.

Now, one thing that my administration tries to do is to approach these things with structure, and because we put a lot of effort into doing it correctly, we are not able to deliver at the speed of need, meaning as you need it, you get it because there are some other things that we have to do. For example, in this programme, as we are trying to hurry to get you the grant, there is a constitutional creature called the Auditor General that is not just waiting until you make a mistake, but the Auditor General is actively auditing as you are carrying out the effort to respond. That in itself places some friction on our ability to move quickly because it is one thing to deliver the grant to you, but it’s another thing to deliver it and somebody saying half of the grant gone, can’t account for it. What we want to do is to make sure that every dollar of the grant ends up in your pocket and not somebody else who didn’t deserve it pocket.

We are not able to deliver at the speed of need, we are trying to deliver at the speed with accountability to satisfy your need; that is what we have been doing and I think the pace at which we have been able to do so is a fairly good pace and I want to thank you. Those of you, especially my lady friend here who was very vocal in saying she’s happy to get her grant so she can cover her roof, get her life back together, I know many of you are out there suffering, water came in, you lose your fridge, you lose your bed, you’re uncomfortable. I know, but the grants are going out now and they will go out a pace so there are a couple of things I want to say about the grants going out now.

I will be tasking asking MOCA to do a sampling for fraud in the recovery grants. In other words, we have to check that if you got a grant that you actually use it for the purpose you got the grant for, and that you’re not defrauding the government taking the grant saying you’re going to do something with it, and you go and do something else. That’s not fair because somebody else who actually needed it could have gotten that grant. So, I want to sound the warning clearly that if you get the grant, the portion of the grant that is directed at your roof, fix your roof. Start your roof, because I know what’s going to happen. Let me tell you.

We know because we have constituents and we give grants to people and sometimes people go to the hardware and they get the building grant and they go and they buy the 10 sheets of zinc and the two by four, and the lart and so forth, and they do go home and they fix. But some get the grant and they go to their hardware, and they stand up there and they watch and see who coming I and then they say, you want to buy some zinc and things, here is the grant. Here is the form, you go inside there, and you just give me $10,000 and you take it and go buy what you want. Some people do that. They never needed it. Somebody else who actually needed it could have gotten it.

These are the kind of things that we will be checking on. The way in which we are giving the grants, now, it might not be so easy to do that because the grants are restricted as to where you can spend them and what you can spend them on, but people can still find their ways and we will be checking. We cannot be spending $10 billion, and we are not seeing the benefit of it in the roofs being restored. Spend it on restoring your roof.

Just to be clear, the government is not just doing this alone. We have a comprehensive Shelter Restoration Programme, and it’s important that I say this so that the entire Jamaica know so that those people who are vested in spreading lies and misinformation, we counter it by giving you the facts. Today, we replaced that word propaganda with fake news and misinformation, but we should really go back to that because that’s the genesis of it, propaganda.

We have a comprehensive programme called the Shelter Recovery Programme, (SRP). One element of the SRP is what we call the Government directed roof repair programme, and that is led by the JDF, and we have several volunteer engineering corps here. We have the Guyanese, the Ghanaians, and the Rwandans are here and they are in St Elizabeth, they’re in St James and they’re in Westmoreland and they’re restoring roofs and they’re doing quite a good job. I toured what they were doing, the people are very happy, and they are proceeding well.

Then we have the NHT and the NHT has a programme where they are giving grants up to $500,000 as well, and in fact, they have started to give their grants and funny enough they have gone over 6,000 grants already, but you would never know. Nobody is calling the radio station to say I got my grant. What you’re going to get is the people calling and saying I don’t get, but it is happening. People are getting their grant. The last report I had they were at 1000, but they move fast, they’re at 6,000 now.

We have some other programmes as well, which are not necessarily for roof repair, but for rehabilitation. The World Food Programme and other partners are also giving grants. And in fact, I should tell you a story that I got a call from someone who was saying how the Prime Minister said if you get severe damage, you get $500,000, but all I see in my bank account is $30,000, but you never hear that reach to the level of a complaint in the media because nobody want to tell anybody that they got this $30,000 in their account and they don’t know what it is for. It is just by accident some brave person decide to complain and then I had to explain and said, no, that’s another programme that the government is doing, quite legitimate and you would’ve qualified for it because you were assessed as being in need of rehabilitation and you will get it for a couple weeks to over the next two months or so.

So, the government is doing quite a bit. We haven’t made too much of it, and the population is keeping it very quiet because nobody wants to be identified as having received a benefit and then somebody else have not gotten it but it’s very coordinated and very strategic. That is why we have gone through and done 86,000 assessments so nobody is getting a benefit who is not on that list of 86,000 persons. Only persons who have been assessed will get the benefit.

Now, if you have not received a benefit and you have not been assessed, and you will know nobody came to your house, maybe you heard the assessors came in the community, but you weren’t there, as Minister Charles pointed out, you can go online and fill out the self-assessment form or use your initiative, go to the regional office, speak to one of the social workers there, explain your situation and let them come and assess you.

I’ve made a commitment that I’m going to try and help everyone that is in need that has gone through assessment, but at some time we’re going to close assessments because we can’t do it forever. The budget is not unlimited so I would urge you if you have not been assessed to do so now, because very soon we will have to close this. And the reason for that is that the hurricane management happens in four phases.

The first phase is preparedness and every year we go through a routine of disaster preparedness. We put out the ads; we tell you how to prepare yourself. If there is a hurricane coming, we go through an intensive process of giving you information so that you know what to do. A lot of people don’t follow the information. They believe the government is telling lies or nothing will come. We said to you, move, and you said no, you’re not moving, you will stay with your house. Hurricane comes, people who never moved, people who stayed in disaster areas we have to go and find you. We said to you, don’t build in the gully, don’t build on the steep hill, don’t go in the marsh, don’t build in the swamp, people still did it, hurricane comes, and the Government have to go find resources so that’s the preparedness side of things.

Then there is the relief. Hurricane comes, the shop closed, water lock off so we have to give you emergency aid; that’s called humanitarian relief and the relief part of our response continues even up until now, but it is winding down. Very shortly we will officially close relief. The relief element was led by the JDF, ODPEM, and the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. In parallel to relief, we started recovery and the recovery section now deals with restoring electricity. Well firstly, restoring access so that meant clearing the roads, moving the landslides and land slippages that occurred and I believe you can say we are like 95% access restored all over. There are some rural areas still cut off because of major land slippage. Those we will have to deal with because for some of them it is better to reroute the road rather than to fix the landslide and so we are assessing the cost benefit.

Then restore electricity. And once you restore electricity, you have telecommunications and water, and we are about 95% there with the restoration of these critical utilities. And then restore roofs and shelter, and that’s what we are doing now. We are restoring roofs and shelters. This we expect to last for another two months or so, so hurry up and restore your roof and your shelter. We will bring an end to that once we assess that all the critical elements of life are restored.

Then now we have the fourth and final phase, which is the most important phase, and that phase is called the reconstruction and the resilience building phase. There are some things that would’ve presented themselves to us as dangers and threats to the continuity of life and governmental function if there were to be another disaster. Our legacy is such that when the colonial powers were making decisions as to where they would locate hospitals or roads, and when our independence government were making some decisions, they weren’t thinking that out of the 800 hurricanes that have occurred, in the future, 200 of them would’ve occurred in the last 10 years.

So when the governments from 1960 going on were making decisions; where is this road going to go, where are we locating the hospital, where we are we putting the school, where people are going to live, they weren’t thinking that in 60 years forward, we can’t build close to the sea because sea levels are going to rise, you’re going to have more hurricanes, more devastating storms. They weren’t thinking to enforce on the people don’t build in the river course because you’re going to have more powerful storms that are going to erode the gully banks and destroy your homes.

We weren’t thinking that way, but it has been exposed to us now that we have to start thinking that way, that we can’t put towns so close to the sea anymore, the hospitals can’t be so close to the sea, and so when we are thinking about how we are going to build resilience and reconstruct, it’s not just build back the hospital where it was, build back the school where it was, build back the police station. No, another storm is going to come again.

Did you think that after Beryl we would have Melissa? If we see this happening, what are we going to do now? If we want to be able to preserve life, preserve property, preserve livelihood, then we have to build smart, we have to build strategic. And it’s not just the government, you have to start thinking that way, should I use zinc roof or concrete? And if I use concrete, how are we going do it?  I’m going to make sure that it is properly reinforced. In fact, I’m going get an engineer to advise me. I’m going to follow the building codes, and if I can’t afford the concrete, I would have to use zinc, then I must have properly spaced rafters supported by hurricane straps. You need to do that. That is what we mean when we say think smarter for your own resilience, because you never have to think about those 50 years, 40 years ago, but you have to think about it now, it’s the reality.

In the reconstruction phase, we are going to have to look at the things that are necessary to keep us functioning as a country if we are hit by a disaster. One of the things that was clear to us is that the roadway, this main road that we have here coming from Spur Tree, Gutters, come all the way, this road can’t carry a disaster so we’re going to have to build a proper road with proper drainage at a higher level that is going to be a part of the reconstruction.

The Black River Hospital, the people there, the staff there did a wonderful job, but the hospital can’t stay there, so too the Falmouth Hospital, so too Noel Homes because we see what it can do. These are some of the things that we will have to relocate in the construction phase. To get to the construction phase, government needs to be totally focused so it can be doing or continue to do relief, restoration, and then to do reconstruction so we want to wrap up very quickly. We’re going to wrap up relief, but the truth is, most people now don’t want to see anybody bring a package to give them anymore. They want to fix their roof now so that’s what we’re doing now and once you get your roof, I know you’ll find your way.

And then when we do the reconstruction, we know that if, God forbid, there were to be any other disaster, the impact of the disaster and the continuity of your life and livelihood would be less and that’s the process. And this is what your government has been doing and this is what I’m totally and wholly focused on for the last few months and many other things I had planned to be doing will still get back to them, but I have had to shift focus to make sure that Jamaica recovers swiftly and stronger than before the hurricane. And I close with the sentiment of the song; we are already rising again.

God bless you and thank you.