Auditor general report lays bare stalled hurricane donations and weak disaster fund controls

A fresh report from the Auditor General’s Department says Jamaica still has not moved most money donated for Hurricane Melissa relief, and it paints a worrying picture of how storm recovery cash is tracked and used.

The document states that of about $1.44 billion received in donations for Melissa-related help, roughly 1.8 per cent, near $26 million, has been paid out so far, all of it for roofing supplies. It also points to balances left over from the earlier Hurricane Beryl response—about $138.8 million in Jamaican currency plus US$100,000—that remain unused.

Investigators say the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management had no spending plan in place, which left assistance idle while people waited. They further record that a financial institution held back about $15.7 million in Jamaican dollars and close to US$300,000 without a formal agreement, slowing transfers and preventing confirmation that the sums ever landed in ODPM’s accounts.

On the roof repair programme, auditors say roughly $34 million in materials moved without signed receipts, and paperwork for contracts above $100 million could not be found. ODPM told them 421 roofs were fixed, yet the team saw no solid proof of who benefited and no completion files. The National Disaster Fund, treated as a national cushion, is said to fall short of legal requirements, including the absence of a dedicated bank account, which led to mingling with other projects. Yearly reports and account statements have not been produced since at least 2018, even though, by February, the fund held about $163 million in cash and $293 million in investments. The Auditor General warns that loose money management and governance could weaken donor confidence and leave the island exposed when another hurricane strikes, and urges the Office of the Prime Minister to set a clear spending blueprint, ring-fence the disaster fund, and put binding arrangements with partners in place.

Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Government Senator Marlon Morgan countered that a parallel real-time audit shows the state has already pushed more than $11.3 billion through roughly 420 Melissa relief and recovery contracts now active, far above the donated pool still marked unspent, and argued the work should be read as evidence of responsiveness rather than scandal.

Separately, Kingston Mayor Andrew Swaby challenged the idea that folding road duties into a single highway-style authority will fix chronic underfunding for municipal streets. At a corporation meeting on Tuesday he pushed back after Works Minister Robert Morgan said Kingston and St Andrew split upkeep about seventy-thirty between the municipal corporation and the National Works Agency. Swaby said the corporation’s roughly $85 million monthly parochial grant cannot cover the backlog, and that both cash and skilled staff must grow if road quality is to improve.

Lawmakers on the Standing Orders Committee began reviewing a draft rewrite of House of Representatives rules on Tuesday to make procedures clearer. Speaker Juliet Holness said the aim is better structure, not a wholesale replacement, and members agreed to consult government and opposition groups. Government member Marlene Malahoo Forte welcomed the staged approach, calling a working draft “truly a best practice.”

St Andrew Western MP Anthony Hylton, speaking after an ethics committee session, maintained that when the House had already ruled on a separate conduct controversy, the panel should treat the matter as closed and outside its remit.

In the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston, cross-examination grew tense in the large prosecution of alleged gang leader Tesha Miller and twenty-four co-defendants. A detective constable described processing a homicide scene on 11 August 2022 and later moving the remains to Spanish Town Hospital. Defence counsel Patricia Gabbidon pressed him on earlier statements versus a 2026 account, and prosecutors cautioned the defence to stay within disclosed evidence, later skipping re-examination to avoid breaching rules on prior consistent statements. Presiding judge Justice Dale Palmer explored whether fresh detail could justify re-examination; prosecutors said they were not alleging dishonesty. The evidence ties to counts over the aggravated robbery and murder of Zamari McKay, with Carlos Williams, Germaine Clark, and Owen Billings among the accused. Proceedings resume on Thursday.

A thanksgiving service in George Town, Cayman, honoured former senator Hugh Ceil Edmund Hart, who sat in the upper chamber from 1980 to 1993, co-founded the Hart Muirhead and Farquharson law firm, and held mining and energy and tourism portfolios in the 1980s before his death on 17 April.

In St James, police launched a youth club at Spot Valley High School, with Assistant Commissioner Charmaine Shand underscoring mentorship for students alongside some 292 school resource officers. Education ministry official Richard Troop linked the effort to sustaining last year’s murder decline. Senior Superintendent Eron Samuels, commanding the St James division, appealed for early tips on domestic flare-ups after several women’s killings, noting twelve parish homicides this year tied to personal disputes, four recent female deaths with three reportedly linked to intimate-partner violence, progress including a murder charge in a Catherine Hall case, and an active search for person-of-interest Dane Watson, husband of slain US citizen Melissa Sabnat, believed to be moving between Montego Bay and St Ann. St James still leads island murder counts year to date.