Letter of the Day | Hurricane Melissa exposed failure on land access and rural roads
Published:Friday | November 14, 2025 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Hurricane Melissa has has torn the veil from a national failure that stretches back to Independence on August 6, 1962. Successive governments have failed to address two long-standing injustices: secure access to land and reliable rural roads.
Westmoreland is the parish where movable wooden board houses – built on blocks and designed to be shifted from one plot to another – remain common. This tradition emerged as a direct response to post-Emancipation realities. Freed slaves who were denied secure land tenure created an ingenious survival strategy: “If I cannot own the land, at least I own my house – and I can move it.” These homes were symbols of dignity and defence against eviction, rooted in Afro-Caribbean innovation.
Yet the persistence of this practice into the 21st century indicts our failure. It means that the injustice of land insecurity, which should have been corrected long before or certainly after 1962, remains unresolved. Hurricane Melissa merely exploited the vulnerability that history created and the State neglected.
The same is true of the motorcycle taxi culture in deep-rural Westmoreland. Bikes became the primary transport system not by choice but by necessity – because the roads are cratered, narrow, unpaved, or impassable for generations. Again, ordinary citizens innovated; again, the State lagged.
It is no longer acceptable for these matters to be treated as local inconveniences. The elected members of parliament for Westmoreland — and neighbouring western parishes – must collectively bring these issues before the Parliament with urgency. As lawmakers, they must table motions, demand debates, propose amendments to the land titling and road maintenance frameworks, and insist on a structured, funded, national intervention. Their duty is not merely to console constituents after disaster, but to legislate proactively for justice, equity, and resilience.
Westmoreland does not need pity. It needs engineered roads, not patchwork fixes. It needs a development plan that honours the creativity of its people rather than leaving them to fend for themselves, and a development policy worthy of a modern independent nation.
Hurricane Melissa did not create these problems, it revealed them. And our lawmakers must no longer look away.
Until Jamaica confronts the legacy of land insecurity and neglected infrastructure, we will forever live in a country where house and transport “tek foot” and move – following work, leases, disaster, and hope.
DUDLEY MCLEAN II