Unspent hurricane cash, farm drought shields, paralysed JUTC and stalled taxi fares stir national debate

An Auditor-General’s compliance report handed to legislators shows that through 23 Feb 2026, government accounts had disbursed just Jamaican Twenty-six-point-two million dollars of Jamaican One-point-four-four billion donated in cash after Category-Five Hurricane Melissa struck on Twenty-eight October 2025, barely one-point-eight percent of those gifts nearly four months on. Pamela Monroe Ellis, auditor general of Jamaica, also notes that when Melissa arrived, Disaster Risk Management planners were still safeguarding about One-three-eight-point-eight million unspent donor dollars stemming from hurricane damage to the western side of the island in July 2024, yet that earlier pool likewise saw little onward movement.

The audit records the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management blaming the stalled draw-down on missing spending authority from the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, and exposes a financier withholding thirty percent of some gifts for forty-five days without a signed pact; Ellis says her investigators could not pin down eventual bank transfers because related statements never reached Audit Department files. Government senator Marlon Morgan counters in a written brief that Twelve-point-three billion earmarked across four-twenty hurricane contracts dwarfs the idle gifts, insisting the dossier reinforces last week’s dual-chamber clearance of legislation creating the National Reconstruction & Resilience Agency. He portrays donor cash as awaiting routine consolidation-line clearance, highlights modular shelters being staged, and relays an expectation of visible shelter rollout within roughly weeks stretching toward six months.

In the Sectoral Debate launched Wednesday toward Two-thousand-twenty-six and Two-thousand-twenty-seven, agriculture minister Floyd Green flags forecasts of sharper heat waves and looming drought. He earmarks One-hundred-and-forty-five million Jamaican dollars, already routed to Rural Agricultural Development Authority, for farm and community rainwater ponds linked through extension officers, plus Eight-hundred million for ninety-five greenhouse shells on rehabilitated mined-out bauxite lands with deeds already countersigned ahead of yearend delivery. Banana and plantain staples need about nine months to rebound after Melissa erased commercial plots; cucumbers and shorter crops are nearer normal, Green adds, pledging renewed yam pushes and Fifty-million-dollar cover for Five-thousand farmers under crop insurance.

Opposition transport spokesperson Mikael Phillips warns the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region’s Jamaica Urban Transit Company is haemorrhaging cash: fares now cover barely sixteen percent of running costs versus roughly seventy percent in Two-thousand-sixteen, patronage cratered from Sixty-three million rides to Eighteen million annually, usable buses fell from roughly four-fifty units to barely two hundred, fare-box income slid from roughly Four-point-five billion to roughly One-point-four billion even as forecast operating losses balloon toward Eighteen-billion this budget cycle before subsidies. He urges root-and-branch resizing, phased retirement of knackered fleets and a franchising model freeing better seats without unfair state incursion onto rural routes granted to private licensees.

Lorraine Finiken, heading the All-Voice Root Taxi Association, recounts Cabinet’s Two-thousand-twenty-three pact for a phased thirty-five-percent fare lift; only the first nineteen points arrived ahead of Twenty-twenty-four, leaving a promised sixteen points outstanding since inflation, elections and Melissa repeatedly deferred rollout. Authorities now verbally target June Twenty-twenty-six, yet parliamentary remarks in March hinted cabinet still debating, fraying operators’ patience amid weekly pump-price hikes and looming vehicle-financing seizures. Operators insist immediate payment of that sixteen-percent tranche before reopening negotiations for the next statutory review window.