John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter
Danville Walker (left), CEO of the Office of National Reconstruction listens to Karen Turner, the United States Agency for International Development'smission director during a press conference held at the ONR's office, New Kingston, on Tuesday. - RUDOLPH BROWN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
THE OFFICE of National Reconstruction (ONR) is to wind up operations in November, by when it is expected that it should complete the Government's rehabilitation programme for those affected by Hurricane Ivan last September.
"November 30 is when we are hoping that we will finish all the programmes. For the ONR, effectively the only programme we have left is the reconstruction of the houses," said Danville Walker, chief executive officer of the ONR on Tuesday during a joint press conference in New Kingston with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to Mr. Walker, "we will be starting to hand over house pads to the USAID contractors within two weeks from where we are now." He said this would have been done already but the recent heavy rains triggered by hurricanes Dennis and Emily delayed the process.
He said the ONR was not only working hard to complete the construction of the houses, which is behind schedule, "but to deliver something that we can be proud of together (because) I don't want to deliver a site that I don't want to drive by."
REBUILD HOUSES
The ONR, under the Hurricane Ivan Rehabilitation Programme, is to rebuild houses in Old Harbour Bay, St. Catherine; Portland Cottage and Rocky Point in Clarendon and Brighton, Westmoreland.
Mr. Walker assured that enough funds were available. He said the ONR currently had about $250 million in the bank, in addition to $170 million to be collected from the National Housing Trust (NHT), the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) and Digicel. He said total funds received by the ONR remained at $920 million.
"At no point, in no programme that I was dealing with (for) ONR, was that programme put on hold waiting for more funds," he pointed out. "I was always ahead of the curve in terms of financing and that is an important thing when you are planning."
Karen Turner, mission director of USAID, one of the major contributors to the ONR's rehabilitation programme, said it would be seeking to fast-track the role it has been playing in helping to reconstruct and rehabilitate those affected.
"By the end of the project the plan is that we would have repaired 49 schools and three teachers' colleges and in addition, we will re-supply, re-equip and refurbish 20 schools to replace material that was lost as a result of Hurricane Ivan."
Ms. Turner said USAID would be repairing 1,000 houses and building about 200 new homes, as well as sanitation systems.
But "...most importantly, we want to be sure that when we put these homes up and repair these schools, when the next hurricane comes they will still be there," the USAID mission director emphasised.
She said USAID has so far assisted almost 1,000 farmers and distributed 1,200 grants to business operators who were affected.
