PNP Says Melissa Relief Audit Shows Planning Gaps, Not Bureaucracy Behind Slow Spend

The People’s National Party has pushed back on the view that the Auditor General’s review of sluggish Hurricane Melissa relief spending makes a stronger case for the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority. According to the Opposition, the audit instead laid bare weak advance planning and the lack of a coherent plan for how recovery money should be used.

At a Monday media briefing at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, Opposition Senator Cleveland Tomlinson challenged recent Government lines that administrative hold-ups chiefly explain the slow drawdown flagged in the Auditor General’s Real-Time Audit of the Hurricane Melissa Relief Initiative. Parliament received the report last week. It showed that by 23 February 2026, only $26.2 million—about 1.8 per cent—of the $1.44 billion in donations tied to the storm had been spent.

Government Senator Marlon Morgan has since said publicly that the audit underlines why NaRRA is needed, arguing that procedural bottlenecks held up getting relief cash to the ground. Tomlinson said that reading does not square with what the document actually records.

“If you examine the Auditor General’s report in its entirety, it will tell you that not only was 88 per cent of the money donated unspent, but it was uncommitted for spending. There was no expenditure plan. Now, bureaucracy slows committed spending. When you have allocated monies for a particular project and you run into some bureaucratic delay, then it delays that. But if you did not commit the money for any particular expenditure, then how do you anticipate in that regard that bureaucracy would slow the spending?” he said.

The Opposition has long taken issue with several features of the NaRRA Bill, which both Houses have now passed. Once it becomes law, the authority will steer major reconstruction and resilience work. During the legislative debate, Opposition MPs flagged worries over oversight, procurement protections, and whether the body would carry robust enough audit arrangements.

Tomlinson told reporters on Monday that the Auditor General’s conclusions reinforced those worries rather than easing them. “What it demonstrates is the need for real-time audit in NaRRA, that’s what it demonstrates,” he said of the auditor general’s report. “Recall, when NaRRA was being passed, one of the challenges, one of the lack of clear risk management functions that the Opposition highlighted, was that there was no audit committee.”

He also asked why so much money sat unused many months after the Category 5 hurricane tore through western Jamaica, displacing thousands and leaving large numbers reliant on emergency aid.

“When I think of the thousands of Jamaicans who were hungry, who were sleeping in buildings without roofs or damaged roofs, and to think that the Government sat on this amount of money that could have been directed in relief efforts is very unfortunate,” he said. “You know, when I think of the amount of mismanagement, the degree of the governance failure, particularly the amount of monies that were left unspent, the question that I think we should ask ourselves is, if the monies were not directed towards relief efforts, what were they being left unspent for? But more importantly, I think we should ask, who were the monies being left unspent for? And when you ask those questions, I want you to think of the history of a litany of Auditor General’s report that have pointed to misappropriation of funds, mismanagement, questionable acts regarding financial mismanagement,” he added.

Tomlinson said an Opposition administration would have put a defined spending framework in place from the start. “The Opposition, from the outset, would have developed a clear plan that would have taken into account what the needs are in the respective areas, and would have ensured that when the monies come in, that they would be deployed in areas needed… and that is why we ground our recommendation in this reality, that there must be a clear plan of action, and if we were at the wicket, certainly this would not have been an occurrence. The money would have been deployed, and it would have been used for relief efforts,” he said.

Opposition spokeswoman on social protection and social transformation Dr Angela Brown Burke said the audit points to wider flaws in how the state organises disaster response, especially on coordination and accountability. She stressed the human toll of the spending lag, noting that many storm survivors were still in acute hardship nearly seven months after Melissa.

“These funds were intended to deliver shelter and to help hurricane victims. Instead, what do we have? Nothing but utter chaos. So the Auditor General’s review has uncovered catastrophic deficiencies in governance, oversight, and accountability, the damning results of millions in funds and materials that cannot be independently verified, and our most vulnerable citizens remain completely unprotected,” she said.