Residents of Douglas Castle in St Ann have been forced to use rafts to traverse the flood-ravaged community. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)
PRIME Minister Andrew Holness said yesterday that Government will revisit the budget to identify funds for infrastructural repairs following extensive rainfall on Tuesday which caused significant damage in several communities across the island.Holness, who who toured sections of damaged areas in St Catherine and St Ann yesterday, said there will be “significant fallout” from the showers but that the Government is responding.
“The Government has to now go and take a second look at the budget to see what areas we may have to reallocate [and] postpone expenditure because this is now a priority for people to recover from this disaster,” Holness said while examining damage done to the main road at Guy’s Hill, St Catherine.
He said, too, that a master drainage plan has already been done and is now awaiting implementation.
“But I think there are greater issues. Where people choose to live will now have to take on greater scrutiny. Informal settlements, haphazard settlements, those things cannot be allowed to continue in our future. The cost of it is just too much and it’s not just the cost in the infrastructure but it is the cost in lives.
“The Government has already formed the view and we will now try to put that into policy to take a far more proactive approach to how we deal with settlement of our land and where people choose to live. It is instructive that the areas that we’ve toured so far and areas that we’ve seen are areas that are close to river banks.
“Greater effort should be taken to ensure that the rules are enforced as it relates to where people are allowed to live and the Government has to be far more proactive in ensuring that people do not settle in areas that we know they are at potential risk and are vulnerable,” he stressed, adding that climate change is a “real phenomenon”.
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