Hendricks calls for inclusive rebuilding

Jamaica’s multibillion-dollar rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Melissa must put the needs of persons with disabilities at the centre, the country’s chief disability advocate has urged.

Thousands of disabled Jamaicans in the western parishes were severely affected by the Category 5 hurricane, and Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities (JCPD) Executive Director Dr Christine Hendricks wants their recovery to be prioritised.

More than 15,000 people with disabilities are registered with the JCPD. These include 1,852 in St Elizabeth, 2,642 in Westmoreland, 2,043 in St James, 1,399 in Trelawny, and 845 in Hanover – the worst affected parishes. More than 1,300 of them are children.

“Like the rest of Jamaica, persons with disabilities in those areas would have lost a lot. For the schools that they are going, those schools have been destroyed or damaged – schools for the deaf and persons with intellectual disabilities. And for those in homes, similarly, the homes that they live in lost roofs or were destroyed,” Hendricks told The Gleaner.

She noted that disabled farmers, especially in St Elizabeth, have lost all their crops or livestock. But many are also missing out on relief efforts.

“The relief efforts for the general population does not necessarily reach to them, because not all of them can come out into the town areas to meet the relief,” she explained.

To address this gap, JCPD teams have been travelling into deep rural communities to identify persons with disabilities, assess their needs, and distribute care packages. However, Hendricks said some registered individuals still cannot be located or contacted, raising serious concerns.

For those in shelters, at least one manager in Westmoreland has communicated his inability to continue adequate care for five disabled persons and wants them to be relocated to infirmaries.

Hendrickson said this points to Jamaica’s lack of an inclusive disaster management and recovery framework.

She said it must become a part of the national discourse.

“There needs to be an inclusive framework to ensure that all persons are accounted for and the management of persons can be adequately dealt with through training,” she said.

Hendricks told The Gleaner that while shelter managers received training earlier this year, she believes the prolonged shelter stays and the hurricane’s scale have “exacerbated” the challenges.

“They never expected that it would be lingering, and I’m seeing that that is the reason that they would be saying, ‘Oh, we can’t deal with it because we would not have been adequately prepared, or we wouldn’t have a framework that indicates how situations and things should be dealt with’,” Hendricks said.

Still, she argued that relocation to infirmaries is not a solution, noting that disabled people want to return to their normal lives.

She questioned whether there will be support, in terms of housing, for families with person with disabilities or disabled persons.

She noted that while the council has received assistance from Food For The Poor, similar nationwide help has been slow.

“What is it as a nation that we will do and put in place to ensure that they are not left out as we are building back? It is the hope of the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities that the universal design to ensure accessibility is front and centre, and that we are not putting up the same structures with all steps that people with disabilities cannot access.

“[We must] think about our population as we build back, to ensure that we are building back strong, resilient, sustainable buildings that everybody can move about in and utilise to do their business … . It’s a national conversation that really needs to take place,” she said.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com