National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority Bill clears House as opposition warns Senate scrutiny

Government members carried the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority Bill through the House of Representatives in the early morning of 29 April, with the tally standing at thirty-one votes in favour and fifteen against after proceedings ran past one o’clock. Opposition legislators continue to reject the administration’s portrayal of the measure as chiefly about helping people battered by storms and speeding physical recovery, saying it instead clears space for large infrastructure choices that stretch beyond the latest disaster.

At a hastily arranged press briefing, Opposition Member of Parliament Dr Dayton Campbell, who represents Eastern Westmoreland—among the constituencies worst affected by Hurricane Melissa—said the statute does not engage the daily hardship facing his voters. He alleged that longstanding flagship construction goals are being advanced under the banner of resilience in ways that overshoot the hurricane’s defined needs.

With the bill now heading to the Senate, opposition figures are pressing for sober second thought, calling for “good sense prevails” as senators weigh each clause.

Dr Campbell argued that, apart from the memorandum of objects and reasons, Hurricane Melissa is not woven into the operative text of the bill and is not named in the body of the instrument. He pointed to overall damage put at about US$12.2 billion and housing stock damage affecting roughly 156,000 units, reasoning that replacing homes would consume a major share of any credible recovery price tag, yet he sees no provisions that speak directly to rebuilding dwellings for residents of his division.

He cast the legislation as a statutory runway for major projects the executive has long floated—highlighting discussion of a new parliamentary complex while, he claimed, more than one hundred thousand people still endure precarious rural housing. He also drew a contrast between attention to Kingston Public Hospital and the absence, in his reading, of a commitment to deliver a new sub-hospital.