Morris challenges Government on 5,000 NHT container homes for Melissa survivors

Opposition spokesperson for housing and sustainable living, Senator Dr Floyd Morris, used Friday’s Senate sitting to press the administration on 5,000 modular units it said would be channelled through the National Housing Trust to people who lost homes when Hurricane Melissa hit last October.

The exchange unfolded while senators examined the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) Bill, which would create the agency meant to coordinate rebuilding after the Category Five storm that hammered south-western parishes on 28 October.

Citing figures he has worked up, Morris said close to 180,000 dwellings were wrecked or impaired in the event, and he put harm to housing stock alone at $350 billion.

“That’s a significant portion of the estimate of damages that have been done to the national infrastructure,” he said.

He argued shelter ought to sit near the top of any blueprint for a harder, safer island, yet the draft statute barely touched the subject. “And so I was expecting that housing would be treated as a priority in any measure to build back stronger and build back a more resilient Jamaica. [But] as I read through the bill… one ‘deggeh deggeh’ reference in the bill towards housing,” he added.

The scale of the language in the bill, he maintained, sat ill with the lived reality of families stripped of shelter. According to Morris, “This doesn’t match up to the thousands of Jamaicans who have been affected by the hurricane in terms of the destruction of their houses”.

He further alleged half-hearted commitment, pointing to an October disclosure that the State would acquire 5,000 container-based houses.

“That was in October [and we have had] November, December, January, February, March, April, May – seven months and not one house has been presented based on that particular announcement to the people of Jamaica,” said Morris.

“I want to know, weh di house dem deh. Where are the houses for the people that you have promised; the 5,000 container homes?” he said.

The senator, who lives with visual impairment, added that, “I look down at the wharf and I caw find dem”.