BLAME US!

FRANCIS... those who drew the plans, those who constructed, those who were to enforce, did you let the ball drop. ARGUING that stakeholders “failed to plan properly for a worst-case scenario”, chief executive officer at the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) Leonard Francis, on Wednesday, held these agencies accountable for the destruction that occurred following the passage of Hurricane Melissa last October, and other disaster events. According to Francis, who was speaking at the World Planning Day 2026 event held at AC Hotel Kingston, the blame should not be placed on any one organisation, but instead each body responsible for planning and monitoring should be held accountable for the damage. He named NEPA and the municipal authorities specifically, and then made mention of others, including, “everyone here in the room, you bear responsibility for what went wrong. Regulators could have done better. Those who drew the plans, those who constructed, those who were to enforce, did you let the ball drop?” He continued: “And although they said ‘informers fi dead’, I don’t buy it; informers should be rewarded. Those of us who saw illegal buildings being constructed, illegal communities being constructed, and sat back and did not report them, you’re at fault as well.” He said in certain professions, mistakes die with the professionals, but not in regulatory professions. “When you’re a land use planner or a urban planner, your mistakes are exposed when you have natural disasters. And what happened is that in the aftermath of the hurricane, we saw the pictures coming out of the areas that were severely impacted. And I said to myself, what could we have done better? And I heard the discussions that we’re not enforcing properly, some of the approvals were not well done, and then there’s a battle, that if NEPA should be blamed or the municipal corporations or the architects or the engineers or those who built… “But I realised that we were all to be blamed. We never planned properly for a worst-case scenario.” He also called out regulators who fail to flag unauthorised construction; and regarding informal settlements, argued that the Government has failed in its efforts to relocate people. Francis called for a permanent solution to the issue, and maintained that the relocation of people living in informal settlements should be placed at the forefront of rebuilding and resilience efforts. “I don’t know if we are brave enough to handle what really needs to be done. But we need to make up our minds once and for all, where do we want to go and what do we want to do? “We all know the areas of the country that have multiple hazards. And we all know that every time it rains, or in the summer, you’re going to have fire; you’re going to have landslides, you’re going to have a lot of things. And when we have the recalculations, it shows that it’s costing the country a lot of money to maintain those settlements. “Are we brave enough to create new settlements and move persons from these areas? Are we brave enough to put in place a 10, 15 or 30-year plan to see those areas in Portland, which are always experiencing landslides, to turn those areas into national parks and move persons from there? We keep on talking about natural disasters. But if a tree falls in the forest and we have a landslide and no settlement is there, is there a disaster? We have to be brave and now is the time for us to say simply, listen, these are areas that will be impacted by multiple hazards, and let us move,” he said. Francis’ calls were supported by chairman at the Natural Resources Conservation Authority and the Town and Country Planning Authority Christopher Whyms-Stone, who maintained that the organisations will place focus on giving policy direction and encouraging new legislation on informal settlements. “We have long used the excuse, whether legitimately or not, of our past colonial, past slave history, to justify informal settlements, the unfairness of how land is distributed… But we see the consequences of that every day. We believe that that excuse is no longer tenable. There has to come a time and a place where everybody has to recognise that there are alternative solutions to human settlement. Naturally, there has to be legislation to support land settlement. But at the same time, we have to hold each other accountable, whether at the local government level, to sort that out. It cannot continue in that order,” said Whyms-Stone, adding that the issue of “gully settlements” will also be addressed. “We have failed and continue to fail to manage them properly. Because of how we use the word ‘gully’, there is some informality placed on them, and a lack of seriousness… So we want to recognise them as the waterways, the special environmental zones. Both the corridors themselves and the buffer zones that allow them to function.” Last month, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness announced that the Government will introduce a pilot in four communities across the Corporate Area to relocate people whose houses are situated on gully banks, and are often affected by adverse weather events.