Sharpened criticism of NaRRA's rental of space at Digicel building

There’s growing resistance to the government’s decision to lease space in the Digicel building in Downtown Kingston as operational base for the newly established National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA).

The Cabinet Office announced on Monday that NaRRA had entered into a five-year lease for its new headquarters in the Digicel building for US$726,000 (J$115 million) per annum.  

Operations at the location are scheduled to begin by November 1.

Governance advocate Kay Osborne, responding on Tuesday, characterized the decision as unfortunate and self serving, and “a long-standing pattern of this government.”

“They have once again failed the accountability test while, tragically, our people suffer. The NaRRA rent agreement should be stopped, put aside pending an independent investigation into the whole matter,” she declared.

Osbourne said the government's statement about the cost of the rent being within market range is a distraction from the real issue.

 “Given the context, any expenditure for rent or for anything else must be essential, proportionate, and demonstrably in the public interest because NaRRA has been created especially, specifically to respond to a major national disaster.,” she reasoned.

Accordingly, she’s urging that the expenditure be judged “in the context of this reality.”

“NARA has not told the Jamaican people what measurable reconstruction outcomes it has delivered or whether those outcomes justify the scale and timing of this enormous expenditure on rent for its own leadership and staff,” she observed.

Breach of law? 

Opposition Senator Cleveland Tomlinson, speaking on Radio Jamaica’s Beyond the Headlines, also questioned whether the government breached the National Resilience and Reconstruction Act by leasing the Digicel building for its operations.

The NaRRA Act states that "The Authority shall, if lawful and practicable, utilise existing capacity, resources, facilities and systems in Government, which may be appropriately co-opted for the purposes of this Act." 

Senator Tomlinson is seeking to establish whether other options were considered before the lease was signed.

“ I think the overarching question that everybody has been asking: Did the government explore sufficiently existing spaces that could have been utilized to facilitate the operations of NARA rather than forking out roughly $120 million on an annual basis? It would have been better for the government to explore the use of existing space, and my intelligence has demonstrated that there are existing spaces that could have facilitated the use of NARA's operations.”