Launch of Building Jamaica Better Fund
Remarks
By
The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Launch of Building Jamaica Better Fund;
Hurricane Beryl Relief Coordination Committee
On
July 8, 2024
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Today should not be a day of too many formalities, but since I have the Honourable Michael Lee Chin here, I will acknowledge him with his full formal title, but generally we just say Mike.
And of course, the Members of the Cabinet who are here with us, our permanent secretaries and members of the private sector. I’m seeing the president of the PSOJ, Metry Seaga here and other members of civil society who have joined us.
Mike tried to give you an assessment as to what the cost of the hurricane could be. I’m not in a position to do that just yet. We have varying estimates, but I’m certain that if agriculture were to give you what their full estimate is versus what the utility companies would give versus what health would give, it would be far more than the damage brought on us by Gilbert. It’s a different kind of damage that hurricane Beryl caused.
Certainly, there is more to damage now than then and so the impact of the hurricane, though not a direct one as you would describe it, a glancing blow, but it has also come at a period of time when we have been experiencing… I want to describe it properly, Mike, because it’s important that Jamaica understands that for the last eight years, almost every two years we have been hit by some form of natural disaster. Maybe not to the extent of a hurricane, but you would consider that we had Etta, we had Zetta, we had all kinds of tropical storms and depressions, heavy rains. The last one was heavy rains that flooded out St Thomas and Portland and parts of St Andrew and almost routinely on a biannual cycle, Montego Bay and surrounding communities would be flooded out. All of these have a fiscal impact, a financial impact, that obviously is leading up to this greater event.
You couldn’t look at burial in isolation. In other words, for the past eight years or so, roads have been flooded out, blocked, scoured, landslides, bridges damaged, and those costs keep piling up. I mean, we try to repair but we can’t repair all so one climate event would not be the total aggregator of the cost of the events to us.
It is important and instructive, therefore, that the country understands how the government is treating with this. We have been treating with this by virtue of ensuring that we mainstream climate resilience in everything that we do. So we are mainstreaming climate resilience in our budgeting process by building buffers and reserves and by literally budgeting for storms so that when a climate event happens, we’re not forced into a position where we have to borrow. We may borrow, but we are not forced into borrowing and what happened before is that every climate event pushed us into more borrowing, so a part of what debt trap was as a result of having to borrow to recover from climate events.
So we’re trying to avoid going down that trajectory but, Jamaica has such a great brand, that when we are hit by a crisis, global philanthropy and local philanthropy will chip in and help, but that is not going to be enough that can help you in the two or three weeks of the crisis but the country has to have its economic and financial house in order to carry out the recovery.
We have a long-term plan and a well-laid plan for this. There is a perspective being shot around that the recovery should be quick and that’s what we want, and there are those who are setting the expectation that the recovery will be next day without taking into consideration some very practical concerns. You can have a quick recovery but not a full recovery. You can have a quick recovery, but not a sustainable recovery and what we want is a sustainable recovery in every dimension of the crisis.
The dimension of the crisis that we’re looking at today is how do we manage public, corporate, civil society, philanthropy, and donations, that’s what we’re looking at today. And Mike stepping forward, as many other persons in the private sector and civil society are doing but they may not be coming to stand in ceremony like us and we acknowledge them and thank them and encourage them, but it is important that the government creates a space where the corporate philanthropy and the civil society philanthropy can be coordinated and organized. Because you could have a quick recovery of everyone running to give to the names that they hear, the parts of the country that appear more on television where are you going to get the most PR branding whilst there are others that are neglected because they have no access, they have no visibility or any voice so my job as prime minister is to make sure that every dimension of this crisis is properly covered. We want to do it speedily. We want to do it correctly.
With a donation like this, where Mike is using his strong corporate reputation, his brand, NCB’s brand to essentially give some leadership to corporate giving and to incentivize it. We’re starting off with NCB’s commitment of an initial 20 million dollars and a commitment to match, and that is the catalyst. Every donation made to ODPEM, so essentially, I’m here today saying match Mike’s anti. Every corporate entity now should put in and let NCB match. It is a good start and I’m expecting that we will see corporate entities pitching in what they can, a million here or five million here. Who knows, maybe somebody will say I’ll give thirty million dollars to show up Mike so I’m encouraging you. And of course, our diaspora, many of them have been calling trying to get in touch with their loved ones and I can understand the fear that they may have not being in touch. Tomorrow I’ll give a report as to where we are. By now most people would have had contact and would have had a better understanding of what the challenges are, so yes, there’s going to be a lot of direct giving from the diaspora, but we also encourage the diaspora to give to the national cause because if you give, NCB Foundation is going to give more so it’s as you say, a catalyst and an incentive. And of course, there are international organizations that are contributing, and we have had a number of them already reach out.
The government’s role in this is to, first of all, acknowledge this effort by Mike, to endorse it and to congratulate the NCB Foundation on doing this and then to recommend it strongly to others to follow. And of course, in a crisis, we are never too proud to say we need the help and thank you for considering us and so that is my appeal today. We do need the help. I’ve toured some areas of Jamaica and I’m almost afraid to call the names because it may overshadow other areas that have been hit but not focused on because though there are some areas where the severity is higher, there is a general right across the country dislocation that eventually we’re going to need to help so as a matter of focus, we’re going to focus on the severe areas, but generally we’re going to need to help but I think the people in Rocky Point and Portland Cottage in Southeast Clarendon on that Southern belt would want the nation to know that they have been badly hit as well. I think the people in the Southern end of St Elizabeth, they would want the country to know that they have been. badly hit as well. I think the people in Hanover would want some attention paid on them from the national media and in St Thomas as well; they would also want to know and in some areas of St Ann.
We know the areas of damage. We have been doing the assessment. We know and we appreciate your patience, and we understand the frustration, but what I’m doing here is a part of the response process that if we get contributions coming in, then we can immediately start to channel them into areas that could help to solve some of your needs. Today we will be creating a website which was done in pretty quick time. It is the Disaster Fund website. It’s called disasterfund.opm.gov.jm. This is part of creating this coordinated platform. This website will serve as our centralized source of information and statistics on the impact of hurricane Beryl as well as a single source to accept donations from persons who want to support the national relief effort. Anyone locally or overseas with a visa or Mastercard, debit or credit, can go on the site and make a donation. Donations received will be matched by the NCB Foundation up to a limit of 150 million dollars.
One of the reasons we established this official portal is to provide assurance to persons who want to donate that their donations are going to the right place and will be put to good use. Again, please make sure that you go to the correct website. Something that we always have to be so careful in today’s world that somebody is going to try and do something to mimic or copy the website. Let me repeat, that the correct website, the one that you should go to and make your donation is disasterfund.opm.gov.jm and for those who would prefer to donate by a bank transfer, you can use the account numbers on the website to donate directly to ODPEM. ODPEM is our Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management agency. They have an established account and the detail for that account is on the website that I just gave you.
On behalf of the government of Jamaica and the people of Jamaica, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Honourable Michael Lee Chin, Mike, and to the NCB Foundation for their vision, generosity and unwavering commitment to Jamaica’s recovery. I am filled with hope and confidence in our ability to overcome this challenge and to emerge stronger than ever. Another word for crisis is opportunity and as I drove through Jamaica and I saw the devastation, I saw the crisis, but I’m seeing so many opportunities for Jamaica to recover stronger. So yes, it is all about now a mindset.
You may not have electricity now, you may not have water, but don’t let that create a mindset of doom and gloom, a pall of negativity that will essentially become a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you allow it. Let us take a positive attitude. Let us take an attitude of hope, an attitude of resilience that we will recover from this stronger. And we’ve gone through many crises before and you can by virtue of just looking back at the COVID pandemic and how we recovered amazingly well and rapidly with all the criticisms and all the difficult decisions that we have had to make, we recovered as one of the strongest islands in the region. We’re taking a similar approach, but we are also taking a learning approach because nothing was perfect and therefore the errors and gaps, we have seen them and we’re making sure that those errors and gaps are not repeated but we’re also seeing the opportunities and we’re grasping them.
So, my fellow Jamaicans, it is a rough time and for the areas that I have toured, I want to say to the people there, I see your pain, I feel your pain, and I’m working as hard as I can to make your recovery as quickly as possible, but to make it as sustainably as possible. And I think that the NCB Foundation has made a step in that direction of quick recovery, but sustainable recovery.
God, indeed, blessed Jamaica. May God continue to bless Jamaica.