Jamaica news brief: ODPEM relief audit, fertility task force, Accompong poll timing, pineapple fines, JPL ties, FX, weather

Months after Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica, an Auditor General’s review has found that, up to February, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management had used about $26 million—roughly 1.8 per cent—of roughly $1.4 billion in cash gifts collected for relief supplies. The document also points to large sums still on hand and to weaknesses in checking how goods moved and how money was paid out.

In Parliament on Tuesday, Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said the administration will craft a national fertility policy alongside a family-support blueprint aimed at reversing a slide in births. A dedicated team is to produce the family-support framework within a year, with goals running to 2030.

Former Accompong colonels Meredith Rowe and Ferron Williams are urging the state to step into the community’s approaching leadership ballot. They argue the register of voters and the overall process are skewed, and they complain that polling is set only seven days after nominations—shorter than what they describe as the usual 16-to-21-day gap between those two steps.

Two people living in St Catherine each received a $200,000 fine or a 30-day jail term after admitting breaches tied to moving and supplying 180 pineapples without the paperwork required under the Agricultural Produce Act. The court was told officers stopped Joan Betty while she carried fruit she had obtained from Richard Williams.

In domestic football, Jamaica Premier League quarter-final return matches were due the same night, with Cavalier meeting Waterhouse and Portmore United lining up against Racing United; every first-leg encounter had finished level.

At midday on the retail market, one United States dollar sold for $159.15, sterling for $215.58, and the Canadian dollar for $117.91.

Thursday’s outlook calls for plenty of sunshine in the morning, turning partly cloudy later in the day.