WAKE-UP CALL
Renewed calls to confront overreliance on Kingston, push for regional self-sufficiency post-Melissa
Published:Monday | November 17, 2025 | 12:10 AMKaren Madden/Staff Reporter
In the aftermath of the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Melissa, calls are growing for Jamaica to launch a serious national dialogue on decentralisation.
The Category 5 storm made landfall in New Hope, Westmoreland, nearly three weeks ago, leaving large sections of the island – mainly western parishes – devastated, with homes flattened homes, roofs stripped, hillsides scoured, and hundreds of people displaced. Kingston, however, escaped major damage, and that contrast, Westmoreland Custos Reverend Hartley Perrin says, is a warning the country should not ignore.
Speaking with The Gleaner last week, he questioned what Jamaica’s recovery might have looked like had Kingston taken a direct hit.
He expressed sadness at the loss of lives and the thousands now grappling with the harsh reality of losing everything they owned. But he was equally troubled by what the disaster revealed about the country’s over-reliance on Kingston.
“What if the hurricane had not come this side but had gone to St Andrew and Kingston?” asked Perrin, who also serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Jamaica Combined Cadet Force.
“It speaks to us about decentralisation. It says that, if the hurricane had gone Kingston, we would have starved down here because almost everything that we have come from Kingston. That’s the commercial centre,” he continued. “We get food, water, everything from Kingston. What if Kingston had been destroyed? We would have been in serious trouble.”
He said it is time to ensure that each of the island’s three counties can sustain themselves.
“So we have to begin to appreciate that the country has to be put in a place where we are self-sufficient in areas, so we don’t have to rely on Kingston to survive, [so that] Mandeville can stand, Montego Bay can help Westmoreland, and so on. The whole matter of these areas, Cornwall, Middlesex and Surrey, if you like. We must begin to put them in a position where they are self-sufficient.”
Even as roads have gradually reopened and supplies begin flowing into the parish, Perrin cautioned that Jamaica cannot overlook the warning flashing before it.
“We are happy, now the roads have been opened, that the Kingstonians can come in to bring in this and bring in that, but, what if you (Kingston) were in trouble? Where would our help come from and how would you survive? We would not have been able to help you. This Melissa also allows us to open our eyes and our minds to how fragile we are as a country and as a people, and how we need to step back and think about how we move forward from here ... . It cannot be business as usual. It has to be a wakening call that says, ‘Hey, let’s shuffle all the things on the table and let’s start again a new game’.”
Disaster risk reduction specialist Dr Barbara Carby, who helped lead Jamaica’s national response during Hurricane Gilbert, agrees that decentralisation remains essential.
“From a disaster risk management perspective, decentralisation is good. In fact, that was one of the lessons we learnt coming out of Hurricane Gilbert,” she said.
Carby noted that after the 1988 storm, efforts were made to strengthen parish disaster committees and expand community disaster management teams.
“For a long time now, there has been talk about developing Vernamfield [in Clarendon] into an airport, and I know we have another international airport on the north coast (Ian Flemming International in Boscobel, St Mary). So all of these are good because what you really want is redundancy. So, the more redundancy we can build into the system, the better for the country,” she said.
Meanwhile, with meteorologists warning that Hurricane Melissa may be a precursor to more intense and more frequent storms, Carby stressed the need to also strengthen Jamaica’s informal construction culture.
“One of the areas of my concern is the safety of small buildings, you know … . Many buildings are put up quite informally and don’t go through the formal approval process. So, can we have a system where those buildings, too, are built stronger so that they have greater survivability?”