Editorial | Restore people’s incomes

Two weeks after Hurricane Melissa tore through western Jamaica, shattering public infrastructure, destroying private property and upending people’s lives, policymakers are still counting the losses and what it will take to rebuild the region.

But they should know enough to know that the task is enormous; that they must establish clear priorities for a job that’s to be done; and that tough choices will have to be made.

The policymakers should know, too, that the urgent mission must be to get the shattered region functional again, and that they must attend to people’s livelihoods by getting money into their pockets, preferably through necessary productive work. So, electricity, water, telecommunications, main roads, schools, health facilities, and basic shelters must be restored to operational levels in days and weeks – not months. A start has been made on this front. It is also important that efforts are rapidly accelerated to remove the millions of tonnes of debris, animal carcasses, and waste from communities. This is a public and mental health initiative that would pay big dividends.

But an equally critical part of overall stabilisation is restoring incomes, especially for those who live precariously: small farmers, fishers, market vendors, artisans, tourism service workers, construction labourers, taxi operators, and informal commercial operators.

For many of them Melissa represented a severe body blow. Small farmers who miss the next planting cycle could lose an entire year of production. Vendors who lost inventory may never recover. Tourism workers displaced because of damaged facilities faced sudden unemployment. This is why livelihood restoration is not a secondary priority; it is a vital part of early restoration.

In that regard, Jamaica must now urgently work out, and deploy targeted public employment and cash-for-work programmes in the affected regions to clear debris, rehabilitate public buildings, clean and reopen schools, restore rural access roads, repair drains, and rebuild community infrastructure.

ECONOMIC STABILISERS

Such programmes would not be welfare transfers, but crucial economic stabilisers. Indeed, countries faced with catastrophic shocks – Dominica after Hurricane Maria to the Philippines after Super Typhoon Yolanda – have universally lied on public works as the fastest way to prevent economic collapse.

The scale of the disaster in the west of the island is insistent that Jamaica should do the same, drawing on the Fiscal Responsibility Framework’s built-in flexibility for just such events.

Indeed, at a minimum, Hurricane Melissa’s direct damage, according to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, amounts to US$6-7 billion, or over 30 per cent of GDP. When indirect losses, business interruption, and long-term economic scarring are added, the figure will be substantially higher.

The severity of this impact cannot be managed by the existing institutional ecosystem alone. Jamaica now needs, as this newspaper previously suggested, a National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), created by legislation, and with full operational authority to plan, procure, execute, and account for, a multi-year reconstruction programme. Such an authority should have a clear legal mandate and independence, reporting to Parliament. It should be guided by a professional board of competent people with backgrounds in engineering, finance, civil society, diaspora, faith-based institutions, NGOs and business leaders. The legislation establishing the Authority should have a sunset clause.

By The Gleaner’s estimate, the government will need to mobilise a minimum of US$3-4 billion over the next three to five years, about 15-20 per cent of GDP, to support reconstruction and resilience initiatives. The resources can be sourced by floating recovery bonds (domestic and diaspora); tapping emergency financing from multilateral financial institutions (World Bank, IDB, IMF, CDB); catastrophe insurance and parametric payouts, reprioritised capital budgets; private sector co-financing (including public-private partnership arrangements); and philanthropic and faith-based contributions.

COVER SIGNIFICANT LOSSES

This won’t be the total recovery bill – insurers and reinsurers will cover significant losses in the private sector (particularly in tourism). But the state’s share – public infrastructure, social services, targeted livelihood support, and resilience upgrades – will inevitably fall within the US$3-4 billion range over the medium term.

Clearly, the post-Hurricane Melissa reconstruction cannot be done on the margins of normal budgeting. A credible programme will require temporary rise in public investment by at least three to four percentage points of GDP. This wouldn’t be fiscal recklessness. It is precisely the kind of counter-cyclical investment strategy that every successful post-disaster recovery requires.

The IMF, the World Bank, and the IDB recognise this. And Jamaica’s fiscal rules explicitly allow temporary deviation from stipulated debt-to-GDP ratio – and therefore the need to run high primary balances – in the face of national catastrophes. This crisis falls squarely within that definition.

In that regard, the country needs to hear quickly from Fayval Williams, the finance minister, on these matters.

Further, if ever Jamaica needed extreme transparency in public administration Hurricane Melissa has made the moment. For public trust is very low.

But in emergencies speed also matters. As does accountability.

Emergency rules must be paired with independent auditing; digital procurement trails; and broad-based oversight. The recovery from Hurricane Melissa cannot become a highway for corruption.

Hurricane Melissa has made another demand: that given the new climate reality, Jamaica must resist the temptation to “patch back” what was there before October 30. If it does, it won’t survive the storms of the 2030s and 2040s.

The reconstruction programme must therefore embrace a bold “Build Strong / Build Forward” philosophy, not just for infrastructure, but for governance as well.

In recent comments to Parliament, the Prime Minister said that Hurricane Melissa will shape a generation of policy decisions.

He is correct.

The real test of leadership will be in whether Jamaica build a governance structure worthy of the moment, invest at the scale the problem demands, and restore the livelihoods of those most affected.