The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA) owes $400,000 to contractors for the post-Dorian Grand Bahama small home repairs programme, a Cabinet minister said yesterday, with 1,100 homeowners still awaiting funding approvals.

Myles Laroda, minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, who has responsibility for the DRA, told media ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting: “We are at a point now where we have sourced the funds with regards to about 2,600 residents at various stages of the home repairs. That would be from about 2,500 and capped at $10,000.

“What we have to do is there are about 3,700 people in total, so there’s an additional 1,100 people who have applied for assistance. However, the former Cabinet only approved 2,600, so we have to go back to Cabinet to get approval for those other 1,100 people. I expect that to be done pretty shortly. I conveyed that message to both the leader of the opposition and member of Parliament for East Grand Bahama.”

The small home repairs initiative was launched by the Minnis administration in February 2020 to help uninsured Grand Bahama and Abaco homeowners effect repairs to their properties that were damaged by Hurricane Dorian.

Mr Laroda added: “The home repairs, as it started under the previous government, there were homes with various stages of damages and they were supposed to be assessed. Whether that was done entirely could be debated, but we are where we are. Commitments have been made. The contractors would have done work, some of them are at the half-way point and some of them have been completed.

“So we do owe just north of $400,000 to those contractors who performed the work. As said earlier, those funds have been sourced so those contractors would be notified shortly when they would receive their funds.”

Due to an ongoing audit at he DRA, Mr Laroda could not go into specifics on whether contractors have been fully paid for works that were supposed to have been completed. He added: “But moving forward, we have in place protocols and mechanisms that would be more detailed and that would be more transparent, so the Bahamian people would know exactly how their funds have been spent.”