Months after Hurricane Melissa swept through Jamaica in October 2025, allegations of shocking inappropriate behavior by disaster victims sheltering on active school grounds have sparked a heated public debate, with the island’s national parent-teacher body now backing claims made by the leader of the Jamaican teachers’ union.
During the opening ceremony of the 2026 JTA Education Conference held last Tuesday, Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Mark Malabver raised urgent alarm over the ongoing use of western Jamaican school facilities as long-term hurricane shelters. He told attendees that multiple reports had documented shelterees engaging in explicit sexual acts in plain view of attending students, a revelation that drew immediate pushback from skeptics who demanded concrete evidence to support the serious claims. Malabver confirmed Wednesday to Jamaica Observer that he would issue a full formal response to these critics on Thursday.
Stewart Jacobs, president of the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ), has publicly affirmed that Malabver’s account aligns with complaints his own organization has received from across the island. While Jacobs acknowledged the NPTAJ does not hold hard, empirical evidence such as explicit documentation to verify the specific sexual activity allegations, he emphasized there is no reason to dismiss the JTA president’s claims as fabricated. “Based on the reports that we’ve gotten over the period of time, it does happen, it does occur. It is not for us to say anywhere at all that what the president of the JTA is saying is fictitious; it’s not,” Jacobs told the Jamaica Observer in a Wednesday interview.
Jacobs went on to condemn the behavior as deeply unacceptable, noting that it is particularly egregious for adults to act in such lewd, inappropriate ways in a school environment where children are present daily. Beyond the explicit sexual activity claims, the NPTAJ has also received repeated complaints of shelterees using obscene language and displaying other untoward conduct around students, he added.
To address the ongoing risks to students, Jacobs is calling for urgent action to physically separate shelter populations from the student body while longer-term relocation plans are finalized. He acknowledged that government faces genuine economic constraints and bureaucratic hurdles to rehousing displaced storm victims, but stressed that the core educational mission of school facilities cannot be sidelined indefinitely. “It was designed for our children to go to school to educate themselves and to be strong pillars in society,” he said.
While Jacobs said he trusts that the Ministry of Education is working diligently to resolve the situation, he is pushing for authorities to accelerate plans to move all shelterees out of active school campuses. As of this week, 81 displaced people remain housed across eight school-based shelter sites across the country.
In response to Malabver’s original allegations, the Ministry of Education issued a formal statement Wednesday contradicting the claims, noting that no reports of sexual activity at school shelters have been filed at the school, regional, or national level. The ministry called on Malabver to share specific details to support his claims, adding that school principals have requested additional time to conduct thorough, extraordinary due diligence given the severe gravity of the accusations.