PERMANENT secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister Ambassador Rocky Meade has defended the Government’s decision to preserve Hurricane Melissa cash donations for longer-term recovery, insisting the auditor general’s finding that only 1.8 per cent of the funds had been spent did not reflect the Government’s full recovery strategy. However, after hearing the detailed explanation from Meade during Wednesday’s sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Chairman Julian Robinson argued that the explanation should have been communicated much earlier and clearer to prevent the public alarm and loss of confidence that followed the audit report. The discussion emerged as the committee reviewed the auditor general’s compliance audit into governance and procurement under the Hurricane Melissa relief programme, which found that the National Disaster Fund Committee had been non-functional for more than two years.
As members questioned officials about how the committee now operates, the conversation shifted to the controversy sparked by a separate auditor general’s report showing that only 1.8 per cent of the roughly $1.44 billion in Hurricane Melissa cash donations had been spent by February 23, prompting Meade to again defend the Government’s recovery strategy. Seeking to place those findings in context, Meade told the committee that the Government deliberately prioritised distributing food, medical supplies, building materials and other items donated in kind during the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, while preserving cash donations to support the country’s transition from emergency relief to long-term recovery. “The point about the percentage of donations that were deployed needs to be put into context.
We were getting donations in kind and we got cash donations. The decision that was taken was in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, while persons were in need of physical items, giving them money would not help them at that time necessarily. They were interested in getting physical items.
The funds that we had, the idea was to reserve those funds to acquire and provide for these [modular] units that would give people the recovery,” he explained. He argued that focusing solely on the amount of cash spent failed to capture the extensive use of donated goods, which he said formed the backbone of the initial relief effort.
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