More Than 50,000 Damage Assessments Completed to Date

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS) has completed more than 50,000 damage assessments islandwide, as it continues its response and recovery efforts following the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.

Chief Technical Director in the Ministry, Audrey Deer-Williams, provided the update at a briefing at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), located at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in Kingston, on December 15.

She noted that of the total assessments completed, 46,135 have been uploaded to the Jamaica Household Damage, Impact and Needs Assessment (JHDINA) dashboard.

“I must add that we have a few that are paper-based. In fact, we have done more than 50,000 assessments, to date. Based on the assessments, 141,946 persons have been assessed,” said Mrs. Deer-Williams, adding that 78 persons declined to participate in the assessment.

She also informed that in terms of damage categorisation, 32.8 per cent of those assessed were classified as severely damaged, while 37.75 per cent recorded no significant damage. Properties totally damaged accounted for 15.48 per cent of the assessments.

Mrs. Deer-Williams pointed out that with assessments completed in parishes that were least affected by the passage of the hurricane, the Ministry has now focused its efforts in the “big seven parishes” which were severely impacted.

“As a Ministry, we are rolling out a strategy to involve more volunteers who will help us to complete all assessments by the middle of January next year,” said the Chief Technical Director.

Additionally, Mrs. Deer-Williams disclosed that since the introduction of the self-reporting assessment form by the Ministry, more than 3,000 persons have indicated the need for assessment visits.

“What we are doing now is cross-referencing those names and TRNs with those in our database to ensure that we have, in fact, not done the assessments,” she said.

She noted that where those assessments have not been done, the MLSS assessment teams will be asked to “go and do the assessment of those persons we would have missed”.

Mrs. Deer-Williams further encouraged citizens who were affected by the passage of Hurricane Melissa and have not yet been assessed to access the self-reporting form via the MLSS website.