Editorial | Schools after Beryl

When Robert Morgan, the works minister, spoke recently in Parliament about Jamaica’s preparations for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, this newspaper was reasonably assured that the government was, by and large, on top of the issue.

Indeed, after the damage caused by Hurricane Beryl, which sideswiped the island last July, the preparation efforts, Mr Morgan suggested, had begun early. The administration had allocated $172 million for mitigation projects in constituencies, to be directed by members of parliament.

Another $560 million was being spent on a general upkeep of infrastructure, such as the cleaning and repair of major gullies and drains to minimise the likelihood of flooding in the event of storms.

All of this appeared separate from the $2.8 billion that Mr Morgan, in another parliamentary statement, indicated was allocated to general infrastructure maintenance in the Budget for the current fiscal year.

“We are ready,” Mr Morgan said. “We are ready.”

As The Gleaner said in the aftermath of the minister’s remarks, we hope he is right. It would be better if his words were not put to the test.

Put differently, the best outcome would be that the meteorologists’ prediction of an active season be proven wrong, and that there are no named storms or serious storms at all.

Nonetheless, as Minister Morgan observed, preparation and mitigation are critical. Policymakers cannot just wish that events do not happen.

COMPREHENSIVE REPORT

It is against that backdrop that we look forward to a comprehensive report on the repair of schools damaged by Beryl and whether, in the face of the recent remarks by Latoya Harris-Ghartey, the executive director of the National Education Trust (NET), the finance is available, or will be forthcoming, to complete the job, and when.

If we understand Harris-Ghartey correctly, $400 million is relatively urgent. Another $2 billion is needed to tackle schools that weren’t so badly damaged by last year’s storm.

Our fear, in the absence of additional information, is that work on partially repaired schools could be undermined or undone, if they were hit by another hurricane, while those that may have been only lightly damaged by Beryl could now be severely compromised by a new storm.

After last year’s storm, the then education minister, Fayval Williams, who is now in charge of the Treasury, reported that 352 schools were affected by the hurricane. About 90 of those were categorised as ‘priority one’, in that they were sufficiently badly damaged to need urgent attention. The others were put in two lower-priority categories.

Up to now, there has been no comprehensive, publicly available report on what repair has been done, overseen by NET, a government-sponsored charitable organisation that, among other things, plans, builds and maintains the island’s education infrastructure, as well as other development projects in the education system.

NET is funded by government subventions, as well as cash and in-kind resources it raises privately, including from Jamaicans in the diaspora.

THIRTY PER CENT OUTSTANDING

On Monday, this newspaper reported Ms Harris-Ghartey as saying that of the schools worst damaged by Beryl, only seven are left for repairs to be completed. Of these, 70 per cent of the work was already done. Thirty per cent is outstanding.

But she added, “For the seven outstanding projects that we would have started, we are seeking $400 million to complete those.

“For the rest of the system … the ones that were identified with minor damage … we are seeking funding to enhance their safety.”

Ms Harris-Ghartey placed that bill at $2 billion.

She was confident that the money would be allocated for the projects before the hurricane season (which began on June 1 and runs until the end of November) gets into full swing.

It is not clear whether this will require new budgetary allocations, or can come from resources already approved for school infrastructure development and upgrading in the current fiscal year. However, the $1.76 billion earmarked in the estimates for such projects include several long-standing initiatives. Whether post-Beryl repair projects are among them is not apparent.

Given Ms Harris-Ghartey’s observations and the logic of getting the schools, some of which are used as shelters during storms, in good shape for the hurricane season, there is need for clarity on the questions of financing and timeframes.

Further, Ms Williams, as the former education minister with intimate knowledge of the island’s education crisis, ought to be well aware of the urgency of the matter. She should also know the levers to pull to release the resources.