SHORTLY AFTER Hurricane Gilbert battered the island in September 1988, the Seaga-led JLP government established a disaster fund. The intention was that with annual deposits the fund would grow to assist recovery from future natural disasters. Gilbert was the first major hurricane to have hit the island in 37 years, a long enough gap for memories to have faded. The exceptionally busy hurricane seasons of the last few years, with four hurricanes generating disasters here in the space of 13 months, has underscored the need for an ample disaster fund.
But only once since the inception of the disaster fund in 1989 with $4 million has the Government made any further deposit. The director of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, Dr. Barbara Carby, recently revealed that the fund now holds only a paltry $22 million. In response to her frank disclosure, the Minister of Land and the Environment, Dean Peart stated that Government does not have the money to contribute to the fund.
Yet each year the Government is forced to find new money considerably in excess of $22 million to deal with disasters. The September 2004 Hurricane Ivan forced the formation of another agency, the Office of National Reconstruction which has expended in excess of $1 billion dollars from revenue and local and external grant sources for post-hurricane reconstruction. The ONR was still engaged with post-Ivan reconstruction when the 2005 hurricane season delivered a further three hurricanes affecting the island at disaster levels.
According to Minister Peart, the process which response agencies must follow in case of a disaster is to write to the Ministry of Finance, which cannot manage to make any upfront allocations to the disaster fund, requesting funds for disaster relief. This has to be fire-fighting crisis management at its best - or worst.
At considerable sacrifice to the economy and social services, the Government has built up a massive Net International Reserve, measured in weeks of imports, to cushion the country from foreign exchange crises. It is even more certain that we are going to have natural disasters. For hurricanes alone, the prediction is for super-active Atlantic hurricane seasons running over at least a decade. By definition a disaster is a destructive event that the local resources of individuals and community cannot cope with.
It is highly irresponsible, and even immoral, for the Government to leave the disaster fund of the state which was created in the light of hard experience, so grossly under-funded with the lame excuse that the Government has no money to put into it. We join the ODPEM and its hard working but frustrated director-general in urging the Government to atone for its sins of the past and in the new fiscal year to allocate some resources to the disaster fund.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
