Editorial | Making NaRRA better

In Jamaica, public institutions often fail because of bad policy design. They are given sweeping mandates, blurred lines of authority, weak performance systems, and too much dependence on the supposed brilliance of one chief executive.

That is why Prime Minister Andrew Holness should pay heed to the criticisms of the bill he recently tabled in Parliament to establish the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA), which is to oversee Jamaica’s reconstruction from Hurricane Melissa five months ago. NaRRA is intended to cut through bureaucratic fragmentation, coordinate major rebuilding, and move projects with greater speed and discipline.

The Gleaner’s Editorial Board argued last week that while the bill gets several things right, its mandate is “too wide”, making NaRRA a potential catch-all for government projects, and that its proposed oversight is insufficient.

In a joint submission to Parliament on the bill, the NGOs, Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) and the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), raised similar concerns, warning that the bill lacked key safeguards for transparency, accountability, public participation, and institutional continuity.

They argued that the bill is too CEO-centric; that the minister is given direct power over the chief executive without a merit-based selection or independent vetting requirement; and that ministerial directions are so broad that they could intrude into operational and project-level decisions.

These are not trivial drafting issues. They go directly to whether NaRRA becomes a professional delivery institution or a politically overcentralised command post.

OVERSIGHT

The same concerns apply to oversight. The Office of the Prime Minister has announced the Jamaica Reconstruction and Resilience Oversight Committee (JAMRROC), chaired by Professor Peter Blair Henry, as part of the accountability framework for reconstruction. Yet JFJ and the JET point out that JAMRROC is not mentioned in the legislation, meaning that it has no statutory standing and no guaranteed continuity.

In Jamaica, informal oversight can vanish with a Cabinet reshuffle, a change in political mood, or the first major controversy. If oversight is essential, it should be built into the law, not just left floating above it like a well-meaning cloud. Indeed, this proposed oversight committee bears all the hallmarks of the seemingly defunct Danny Roberts-chaired Public Sector Transformation Oversight Committee (PSTOC),which was established in 2017 to help in the transformation of the public sector. No final report of the PSTOC has been made public.

There are other weaknesses that the commentators have identified and which should be addressed before Parliament approves the bill, making it the NaRRA Act.

JFJ and the JET note that it lacks a binding objects clause that clearly anchors the authority in “build back better” principles and long-term resilience. They also point to its

• inadequate requirements for public participation.

• weak treatment of gender and equity concerns.

• lack of insistence on mandatory environmental and social impact assessments.

• its incomplete dissolution arrangements, with no successor resilience unit or final lessons-learned report.

INTER-AGENCY COORDINATION

Meanwhile, a letter writer to The Gleaner argued that the bill needs an explicit linkage framework for inter-agency coordination, shared planning, integrated execution, and public reporting on inter-agency performance. That critique is well made.

To be fair, the bill does contain positive elements, which The Gleaner highlighted previously. The problem is that good intentions and some useful clauses are not enough if the broader structure is still too loose, too centralised, or too weak. A public body succeeds when mandate, authority, accountability, and capability are aligned.

There have been suggestions about using the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to help in getting the NaRRA up and running quickly. The UNOPS is already assisting Jamaica’s post-Hurricane Melissa response. Internationally, it operates as a delivery platform for procurement, infrastructure, and project implementation rather than as a donor. That means that the UNOPS could potentially help NaRRA in areas where the Jamaican public sector often struggles under pressure: procurement discipline, engineering support, contract administration, project controls, and transparent reporting systems. In other words, if NaRRA is to be the brain and legal authority of reconstruction, the UNOPS could help supply some of the technical muscles and tendons.

It would be important to ensure that the UNOPS does not become a substitute sovereign or a shadow government. It should, therefore, be under tight contractual rules: milestone-based payments, full procurement transparency, independent technical audits, and mandatory transfer of skills to Jamaican professionals.

NaRRA must remain the national institution with legal authority, political accountability, and strategic control. If it uses external support wisely, NaRRA can both rebuild faster and strengthen domestic capacity.

The advice to Prime Minister Holness is that the bill must narrow down and clarify NaRRA’s mandate, hardwire independent oversight, constrain executive discretion, require merit-based appointments, mandate inter-agency coordination, embed public participation and environmental safeguards, and establish a proper exit and legacy framework.

These are features that are common to most successful public bodies. Jamaica must build NaRRA such that it is not just a fine idea that ends up a very expensive disappointment.