KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC—The Jamaica government launched the Relief Emergency Assistance and Community Help (REACH) program last week, aimed at providing immediate assistance to people affected by Hurricane Beryl’s passage.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness told Parliament that the significant elements of the program include the distribution of food and essential supplies, utility, water, electricity, and telecommunications restoration, housing reconstruction and support, economic recovery, and repair of livelihood.
He told legislators that the Ministry of Labour and Social Security has been distributing care packages containing canned food, flour, rice, cooking oil, and other items through its network of social workers.
“These care packages contain enough food for a family of four for four days,” he said, adding that approximately 5000 families would have received care packages by Tuesday.
Holness said that the government is coordinating the continued distribution of food, water, medical supplies, and other essentials to citizens in the most affected areas and that a critical need is the provision of medications, particularly those that require refrigeration. He said the Ministry of Health and Wellness has issued a release guiding the distribution.
Holness said four million dollars will be allocated to each member of Parliament to respond to constituents’ immediate needs. He said an additional three million dollars will be allocated to constituencies where it has been determined that the damage is more severe.
Holness told legislators that the damage to the country’s roads caused by the category four storm could exceed the J$10.2 billion (One Jamaica dollar = US$0.008 cents) figure recorded by the National Works Agency (NWA) in its preliminary estimate.
The NWA said that 95 percent of the blocked roads had been partially cleared, and work continued.
Prime Minister Holness said the blocked roads had caused limited access to critical services, including at hospitals, 38 percent of which have been damaged.
He said the estimated cost to repair those damaged, mainly infrastructural works, is more than J$1.8 billion.
“The hurricane caused widespread outages of electricity, water, and telecommunication services. The absence of these services has exacerbated the suffering of our people struggling to cope with the storm’s immediate aftermath,” said Holness.
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