Dawn RitchTHE MOST Honourable Prime Minister has set up an Office of National Reconstruction (ONR), reporting to himself in response to hurricane damage. Overnight he has created a new institution to handle the relief and rebuilding effort in those areas that were damaged, and Danville Walker, Director of Elections, seconded to head it.
A man whose praises are sung in every corner, Walker's new appointment apparently reflects the overwhelming and urgent need for a patina of transparency to the Government's operations. Because it can have nothing to do with the efficiency of the relief effort.
Any properly structured Government operating in an area prone to national disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes should have embedded in it a response to these events. Not only a response, but funds set aside for that disastrous rainy day. This is merely an elementary and necessary operational insurance for any country in our position.
Our Government apparently had no such response, and had to create overnight a brand new institution. Indeed, the Patterson administration sent a desperate begging letter to the capitals of the world before the rain had even dried on the ground.
Neither a plan, nor a shred of national pride. Just the Office of National Reconstruction as the new face in a long line for the collection of alms.
Based no doubt on his penchant for committees and new institutions, the Most Honourable Prime Minister decided that there was no single Cabinet minster, nor team of them, who could be entrusted with the task of reconstruction.
Not Dr. Paul Robertson, Minister of Development who is grossly under-utilised, or Portia Simpson Miller, Minister of Local Government who, under the circumstances, has some portfolio responsibility in the matter. Not one member of his oversized Cabinet was judged competent enough to handle the situation.
WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING
The Prime Minister weighed his entire Cabinet in the balance and found it wanting. Instead, he sought out Danville Walker and made him tantamount to a Cabinet minister with over-arching powers that can cut across, and call on, any ministerial portfolio. The ONR is in effect a supra-ministry reporting not to Cabinet, but through the Prime Minster.
This is all very surprising to me, if not indeed downright baffling. It must be noted that, under the Patterson administration, the Permanent Secretaries Board is headed by the Cabinet Secretary Dr. Carlton Davis, instead of the Financial Secretary who was traditionally the most senior member of the service.
The Financial Secretary allowed herself to be pushed aside without a whimper, making Minister of Finance, Dr. Davies, the Prime Minister's righthand man and czar of every situation. Whatever else may be at work here, I'm sure it's not the Westminster model as we know it.
Under the new system, whatever it is, the only certainty is that layers upon layers of bureaucracy can be added ad infinitum. Now the Prime Minister had identified a new czar to deal with his reconstruction.
Any new governmental agency, even one reporting as this does to the Prime Minister himself, needs about six months to get up and running. Initially it has no momentum.
There has to be an understanding of what the duties are. There must be no overlapping functions with all the other existing agencies, and staff have to be selected. And those currently holding these positions in other Government agencies won't be particularly helpful if they think they are losing turf.
In addition to the new ONR, there also still remains in the Office of the Prime Minister the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM). This was the unit established some years ago to handle the preparations and relief for a natural disaster.
ADDING LAYER OF BUREAUCRACY
Who am I to question the Prime Minister's judgment? He must have more intimate knowledge of their incompetence, because he thought it no duplication of either function or effort to establish an Office of National Reconstruction.
The ONR is clearly envisaged to have far greater powers than the ODPEM, so why not replace it with the latter instead of adding layer upon layer of bureaucracy?
In this time of deep financial crisis when everyone agrees we have a bloated civil service, should we be adding yet another institution, and yet another layer of bureaucracy?
And all this while Dr. Omar Davies, is carried on TVJ saying he doesn't want an estimate of hurricane damage from "every little man", while frankly admitting that he has none of his own.
We hear about some Government agency or other with over 500 agents in the field assessing hurricane damage. Indeed, that the Minister of Local Government has also opened a register at the Ministry for all who have been affected by hurricane damage.
Jamaica Labour Party MPs with rural seats are on radio complaining that they don't know what to tell their constituents to do, or how to access aid from the state.
The Roman Catholic charity Food for the Poor is being lauded as virtually the only authority that has been making sense and being helpful to the needy with large quantities of flour, rice, mattresses, clothes, zinc and even housing.
And all this despite a brand new Government institution dedicated to the purpose. It shouldn't really need a specialist assessor to determine that a man needs two sheets of zinc.
