Why are billions of dollars collected for Hurricane Melissa relief still just sitting there in government’s bank account months later?
So we all know that government is notoriously inefficient. And that even goes for spending money. Stuff takes forever to get approved, procurement processes take months. It’s a pain.
But when you have an emergency like a category five hurricane and people need help NOW, that cyaa work!
Well, a new Auditor General’s report says that’s exactly what happened and Jamaicans are big mad, understandably so!
According to the report, the Office of Disaster and Preparedness Management, ODPEM received about one point four billion dollars in cash donations for Hurricane Melissa relief. But up to February 23, they only spent $26 million. That’s less than 2% of the money. While people were still struggling to recover, donation money was sitting there unused.
Most of the funds came through direct deposits and the government’s Support Jamaica platform. The government collected J$473 million and US$6 million, which works to almost J$1 billion in total.
But wait there’s more! Apparently, they still had millions of dollars donated after Hurricane Beryl just sitting there too. Almost J$140 million and over US$100,000 in Beryl donations were still unused when they started fundraising for Melissa relief.
ODPEM didn’t provide full details on how much was collected and spent for Beryl.
Now in their defence, ODPEM said the low spending happened because it did not have authorisation from the Ministry of Finance to use the money. And they said that the limited use of donated funds didn’t mean nothing was happening.
Still, the audit raised serious questions about how the money was managed. The report analyses up to February. That was four months after the storm and a time where there was still a lot of work that needed funding.
The report also revealed that a financial services company withheld 30% of some donations to cover possible chargebacks, but ODPEM had no formal written agreement for that arrangement.
More than J$15 million and US$298,000 were also held past the expected deadline. Auditors could not confirm if the funds landed in ODPEM’s accounts because bank statements were not provided.
Then there’s the roof repair programme. ODPEM committed $167 million for roofing materials, but only $26 million in payments had been verified.
Auditors also found weak record keeping around relief efforts. Millions of dollars in materials delivered to JDF locations were missing proper documentation, and auditors could not fully verify ODPEM’s claim that 421 roofs were repaired because key records were incomplete.
So the issue is not just that Jamaica spent too little of the donated money.
The bigger problem is that the systems around disaster relief are weak. This matters because disaster donations depend on trust. If Jamaicans and international donors feel the money is not moving fast enough, or cannot be properly tracked, they may think twice before giving next time.
And that’s the bottom line.
