Handing Over of Building Supplies to ODPEM
Keynote Address
by
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness, ON, PC, MP,
Prime Minister of Jamaica
at the
Handing Over of Building Supplies to ODPEM
on
January 16, 2026
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Brigadier Bogle, our friend, thank you so much, my brother from the Ghanaian Forces Engineering Regiment.
Representatives from the Guyana Engineering Corps who are here, and of course, the men and women of the Jamaica Defence Force, Commander Gayle, the Director General of ODPEM, (our Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management agency) but none of you are as special today as is Mrs Antoinette Taddeo, representing New Era Homes, one of Jamaica’s premier housing developers.
This programme, the government directed roof repair programme is the beneficiary of the philanthropy of two large housing developers in Jamaica, Kemtek, which allocated from their resources $70 million worth of materials and New Era, which contributed $160 million of tools and building materials, and that has given us a very good start towards the government directed roof restoration programme.
I should also acknowledge that the Government of Guyana, which undertook the restoration of 200 roofs, not just allocated the human resources. In other words, they didn’t just send their engineers, they sent their engineers with a few shiploads of materials as well. In fact, this morning I got a call from President Ali to tell me that there was another ship coming with material and so I want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Guyana as well. I see some members of the Guyanese engineering corps looking around at each other saying it looks like our stay is going to be extended, but we say in Jamaica, gratitude is a must and so we are here to give thanks.
Antoinette, on behalf of the people of Jamaica, we want to give thanks to the New Era Development and their family for the great consideration and philanthropy towards the people of Jamaica. I’m sure the people of Luana, Middle Quarters, Accompong, Bluefields, and White House where work has already begun, I’m sure that they are most grateful.
I should also say that we’ve seen that the engineering contingent from Rwanda landed either yesterday or the day before and they are getting settled in and I gather they will be deployed somewhere in St James to assist communities there. Today is about giving thanks and also celebrating the philanthropy of the Jamaican business community that have contributed to this effort and to acknowledge the support from our brothers in the region and from the African continent.
I want to use this opportunity, however, to make a few points that would be beneficial to the general public. Yesterday we launched the ROOFS Programme, which is the conditional cash grant that we will give to persons who have been assessed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security as being in need of either minor, moderate, or severe damage and that programme will start dispersing in the last week of this month.
Now, there is another programme which is ongoing, and that is as I’ve mentioned before, the government directed Roof Repair Programme, where we select certain communities where the government through its engineering capabilities, through the JDF and supported by volunteers from other engineering corps from Africa and regionally, will physically replace and repair roofs. Now, we know that we do not have enough manpower to do this on a wide scale, but the manpower we have, we could possibly do four to 500 roofs within a month or two.
I see Brigadier Bogle looking at me and saying wishful thinking, but I know if I give the command, he will get it done, but realistically, we have to expand the score of engineers so we can’t rely wholly and solely on the engineering capabilities of the JDF and our volunteer partners. This is also an opportunity for us to train persons in carpentry. We’re going to need the skills as we enter the reconstruction phase when the real construction work begins, and right now it is patently clear that we do not have enough skilled labour in the construction industry so we are going to expand this programme through the HEART Trust/NSTA to bring onboard trainees to work alongside the engineering corps so that there can be some transfer of skills. Out of this programme, we’re hoping that not only will we get roofs restored, but we will have at least a cater of 100 or 200 trainee carpenters who can upskill and be integrated into the commercial world for construction. That’s another mission, Commander Bogle, that you should start to prepare for.
Aside from that, we have been focusing extensively on roof restoration, but you will know that there are some houses that have been totally destroyed and you have to build the base and the four walls before you can focus on roofs. We have purchased through the NHT and through the Ministry of Housing prebuilt modular rapidly deployed housing solutions. The NHT has on order 2,500 and the Ministry of Housing has on order about 330. Those will require some amount of engineering support; support to build the bases on which they will be anchored, support to fit them on the bases, and support to assemble. This may very well be, Brigadier, another as you would say in the military, line of effort that you will have to pursue in support of our recovery.
Gentlemen, men and women of the JDF, your work is not only cut out, it is multiplying as the days go by, but I know that your motto is, yes, you can do it. I was hoping to hear a roaring positive response, but that’s what engineering is. Engineering is if nothing else, it is about finding the solution to a problem so I know you will figure out a way how to get all of this done. But the larger effort, as I have said, will be in the reconstruction and in the reconstruction, we’re not going to be incremental. It’s not going to be unambitious effort. This side of the island has long been crying out for massive investments. The roadway that connects these parishes clearly is not sufficient to carry the level of traffic that uses the corridor. The entire corridor needs to be realigned, reconfigured, and not rebuilt but built anew and built forward for the growth that we expect to happen in this area.
The urban infrastructure, the towns, they need to be reconfigured and built smarter. Our hospitals, they need to be rebuilt and built in areas that are not susceptible to weather and climate change events. Our police stations, our municipal buildings; all of those have to be rebuilt, but it will not only be a rebuilding of infrastructure. What we are planning is to build a new economy for these damaged parishes because you can’t build a road to nowhere. Whatever you build must support the emergence of a stronger economy.
And what are the economic drivers here? They’ve always been here, but the economy has not really supported it; tourism. And under tourism, you have several sub-sectors: health tourism, sports tourism, festivals- great opportunity for tourism, agriculture. Minister Green is here and we did start investment in agriculture by investing in irrigation because agriculture relies heavily on irrigation and ensuring that the arable land is actually irrigated and we were already down the wicket. We’re going to go much more in that, but we can’t continue with agriculture that is susceptible to the vicissitudes of climate and weather events. We have to introduce technology into our agriculture that makes it robust and makes it enduring and we will be looking at introducing agriculture more on a planned structured industrial scale because we have the capabilities here in this region.
Things like, for example, greenhouse farming, eggs, poultry; all of these are things that we need to invest in in a significant way, logistics, light manufacturing; all of these are areas in which we intend to invest in so the future of this area, of these parishes that have been damaged will be quite different but much better than we were anticipating or hoping for before Hurricane Melissa. So yes, Hurricane Melissa was a disaster. It created a crisis, but every crisis presents an opportunity, and we must not waste the opportunity that the crisis has given us. We will rebuild Jamaica much better than we ever thought it could be.
And again, I want to thank our corporate citizens, New Era, for this significant contribution of JMD$160 million, and I want to thank our partners from Africa: Ghana and Rwanda, and to thank our partners from CARICOM, specifically Guyana, who are contributing to this process.
Thank you.