Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Dana Morris-Dixon, said that rebuilding after Hurricane Melissa will be about building back better than what existed before the monster Category 5 storm devastated sections of the island on Tuesday, October 28.

“Because when you rebuild, you’re just going back to the state that you were in, and that state we were in was one that was not the most resilient. And so as we think about what we’re doing in the post-Melissa era, it has to be about building back better, it has to be about re-envisioning Jamaica, especially re-envisioning Jamaica in the context of climate change and the fact that these types of weather events will become more frequent,” Morris-Dixon said.

The minister emphasised that the nation doesn’t have a choice but to become much more resilient than it has been. “[The Marshall Plan] is that kind of big thinking that we’re going to need in Jamaica for us to get to that resilient place that we need to be. Our big multilateral partners, the World Bank and the International Development Bank (IDB), are working now with the government to look at that re-envisioning of Jamaica to make Jamaica much more resilient.

“So we’re looking for the expertise, and that expertise, you know, the World Bank has that expertise. And so we are getting that expertise to help us understand how we build back better. But right now, the immediate need in many of our communities is for food and water and shelter. And so this support that is being provided by a lot of the partners here is central,” she continued.

Morris-Dixon outlined that while the government thinks of rebuilding, the country is still in the relief phase. “We have to start thinking about recovery and also about the reconstruction phase. We have to really be very strategic about that reconstruction phase to ensure that we actually create a different kind of Jamaica that is a lot more resilient.”

She noted that the education sector is also central to any kind of Jamaica that the government and its partners are going to be envisioning. “Our schools aren’t just places of learning; as we saw with this hurricane, the schools are the shelters. And if a school falls apart, then that structure that the community needs is just not there. And so as we rethink Jamaica and we think about the future, we have to think about how we design our schools to not just be those areas where we impart knowledge, but also important parts of the community, especially in light of natural disasters.”

She alluded to the fact that all of the children in the Western parishes are at home because there is no school, electricity, or water, which results in real learning loss. “And it’s hard to get it back. We saw it in COVID…And we’re just starting to get back to pre-COVID. And then we are seeing this disaster again, so it’s very important throughout all the sectors we’re looking at that we take that vision about being better than before, because that’s what we need if we are going to thrive as a country, we have to build back better,” Morris-Dixon concluded.