The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

DISASTER Reconstruction Authority executive chairman Alex Storr said the authority no longer supports using domes as temporary homes, finding the structures unsuitable for “human occupation”.

The Minnis administration spent more than $6m on nearly 200 domes after Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

However, not all domes were erected, and some were demolished after officials found them a safety hazard.

“After doing a further audit inventory of the domes, we find that all of the parts are not there and so what we have been doing is people have been writing in, asking for domes for certain purposes and we have approved these on a case by case basis,” Mr Storr said yesterday.

“One of the examples I’ll give you is during the recent CARIFTA games, they asked for some 15 domes to use for storage during the games, and we complied with that. They were able to use those for storage.”

“People want to use them for chicken coops and other things and as we get those requests, we approve them so on some cases depending on the request, they may give some financial contribution in return for the domes.”

Mr Storr also said vehicles, building materials and other donated supplies remain missing after Hurricane Dorian though some items have been retrieved.

“We were able to locate some two forklifts and other equipment about a month ago in a warehouse in Cooper’s Town and so we’re still actively looking, trying to locate these materials and as we find them, we take them back,” he said.

He added that the DRA recently signed contracts with local Abaco and Grand Bahama contractors to conduct repairs through the Homeowners Assistance and Relief Programme.

“I think we have some 40 repairs on both islands that are ongoing, and we’re getting ready to launch into phase two, where we’ll sign additional contracts,” he said.

He said audits into the DRA operations were conducted, and some matters were sent to the police for investigation about three months ago.

“We had two audits ongoing, a forensic audit as well as the financial audit,” he said. “We’ve received both of those. The forensic audit, we have looked over it and we have turned that over to police, who are now investigating. There were things that we saw that made us uncomfortable and we thought it was best to put it in the hands of the police instead of us doing the investigations. Let the police determine and may the rocks fall where they may.”

Police officials could not be reached for comment up to press time yesterday.

“They told us that they had a list of persons that they wished to question and so they were about to begin that process,” Mr Storr claimed.

Free National Movement leader Michael Pintard said he was unaware of any investigation.

“Under my leadership, we have no difficulty with audited reports of the function of any arm of government,” he said. “I only wish that he would extend that audited report to cover the last 22 plus months under the Progressive Liberal Party as we understand that there might be some concerns with respect to DRA.”