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Six months after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa tore through large swathes of western Jamaica, a mounting controversy has erupted over the ongoing use of school buildings as emergency shelters for displaced storm victims, with the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) president Dr. Mark Malabver flagging deeply alarming incidents of inappropriate adult activity witnessed directly by students on campus.

Dr. Malabver outlined the gravity of the situation during the opening ceremony of the 2026 JTA Education Conference, a three-day professional gathering hosted at the Princess Grand Jamaica Hotel in Green Island, Hanover. In his opening address, he emphasized that reports of shelter residents engaging in sexual acts within clear sight of attending students should spark universal outrage across the island.

“The conditions are deeply troubling. Reports of shelterees engaging in sexual activity within the clear view of students is something that everyone should be outraged about,” Dr. Malabver said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference with Jamaica Observer, Dr. Malabver confirmed that the first reports of these incidents reached his office from an unnamed western Jamaican parish over a two-week period last month. According to accounts gathered by JTA leadership, students who witnessed the inappropriate activity first filed formal reports with their classroom teachers, who then escalated the concerns up the association’s chain of communication. To date, Dr. Malabver noted that he cannot confirm whether these incidents are ongoing, nor have any formal police reports been filed over the alleged encounters.

Beyond the high-profile incident of student exposure, the JTA has long held that the prolonged use of educational facilities as emergency shelters is entirely unsustainable. Dr. Malabver highlighted a litany of other ongoing disruptions facing schools and staff: teaching resources have gone missing from locked storage, and once-respectful learning spaces have devolved into overcrowded conditions more comparable to informal tenement yards than accredited educational institutions.

The JTA president directly pushed back on recent public comments from Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie, who claimed that the vast majority of displaced shelter residents had already relocated from school grounds, and that any remaining disruptions to academic operations have been kept to a minimum. Dr. Malabver refuted that claim point-by-point, noting that widespread disruptions remain a daily reality for students and staff across affected parishes.

“When we hear, for example, the claim by the minister of local government that there is no displacement, we must ask, ‘What do we call it when students are removed from classrooms and placed in tents? What do we call it when schools operate on rotation systems because classrooms are occupied by shelterees?’ If that is not displacement, it must be replaced,” Dr. Malabver quipped during his address.

Dr. Malabver clarified that the JTA’s campaign is not an attempt to interfere with the Local Government Ministry’s core portfolio responsibilities, which include waste management, public park maintenance, market operations and parish road upkeep. Instead, he framed the push for relocation of remaining shelter residents as a core obligation of the association to advocate for its members and protect the welfare of Jamaica’s students.

“Our… students are exposed to the elements, along with their teachers, while classrooms are being occupied by shelterees under fans. That is not just unacceptable, it is outrageous — something that no modern society or Government should condone, let alone seek to defend,” he added.

In closing, Dr. Malabver emphasized that the prolonged status quo is far more than an inconvenience for education communities — it constitutes a direct violation of fundamental rights for both children and teaching staff. He cited multiple binding international and domestic legal frameworks that Jamaica has already adopted, including the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Occupational Safety and Health Convention, which Jamaica ratified more than 25 years ago, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the island’s own domestic Child Care and Protection Act. The current conditions, he argued, run counter to both the letter and spirit of all of these binding agreements.

Early Tuesday morning, a devastating rollover crash on Spur Tree Hill main road, a notoriously dangerous stretch of highway west of Mandeville, Jamaica, has left two people dead, shining a renewed spotlight on longstanding safety concerns that have plagued the steep route for decades.

Local law enforcement has released the identities of the two victims: 25-year-old Jordan Sterling, a truck driver from Kingston 20’s Patrick Drive, who was operating the cement-loaded tractor trailer at the time of the incident, and 21-year-old Yanice McLeggon, a welder residing in St Catherine’s Central Village, who was riding as a passenger in the vehicle.

According to initial police accounts, Sterling lost control of the heavily loaded vehicle as it traversed the hill, causing the truck to overturn multiple times. Both occupants were thrown from the cab during the sequence of crashes, and the trailer ultimately came to a rest just meters from residential homes in the Eglinton community. The force of the impact was powerful enough to jolt nearby residents awake at approximately 5:00 a.m.

One local resident, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, described the chaos and terror of the immediate aftermath. “I was sleeping and I heard a hard hit and something like a scrape and like it slammed into something. Then I saw the light dimming and then I got up and heard everybody saying ‘Truck turn over!’ When I came outside it was just dust; like when you see fog. Everything down there was fogged up, I couldn’t see anything [clearly],” he recalled. When he reached the crash site, he encountered a horrific scene: Sterling was still partially conscious, moaning in pain with only his hand moving, but residents lacked the equipment and training to safely move him, while McLeggon lay motionless on the hillside.

Emergency response teams from the Mandeville Fire Station received the emergency alert just minutes after the crash, according to District Officer Trevor Robinson. “On arrival [we] saw a trailer overturned over the precipice. After carrying out a search of the area, one person was found alive and another person found with no sign of movement,” Robinson said. He praised his team for their swift and skilled work to extract the two victims from the wreckage. “Our men really need to be commended. We arrived at a good time… When the situation was assessed we realised that we needed a team of persons to carry out the rescue, so [they] were deployed and they were excellent in what they did,” he added.

The Spur Tree Hill main road serves as a critical transportation link connecting Mandeville and its surrounding areas to St Elizabeth and other western destinations in Jamaica. For years, road safety advocates and local drivers have warned that the route’s steep gradient and sharp curves make it exceptionally dangerous for heavy goods vehicles, which often travel slowly up and down the hill, creating persistent traffic hazards and a long track record of fatal crashes.

Back in February 2022, Dr Lucien Jones, vice-chairman of Jamaica’s Road Safety Council, alongside senior law enforcement officials, outlined the core causes of repeated crashes on the hill in an interview with the *Jamaica Observer*. At the time, Jones noted that many drivers operating heavy vehicles on Spur Tree Hill lack proper training for navigating its challenging terrain. A key recurring mistake, he explained, is that drivers fail to shift into a low gear early enough to control their speed when descending, relying instead on brake pads that can overheat and fail when carrying heavy loads, especially around sharp curves. “Training is a central part of it, in terms of getting your general licence or your trailer licence,” Jones said. “[They] depend rather on brakes which can fail you, especially with very heavy vehicles and turning around those curves often leads to the kind of news reports that we get about crashes, both non-fatal and fatal,” he added. Jones also urged all drivers, both ascending and descending the hill, to exercise extreme caution, as unexpected hazards can appear around any blind curve.

On Tuesday, Adave Dockery, a fellow truck driver who spoke to reporters at the crash site, echoed Jones’ warnings, emphasizing the steep descent of Spur Tree Hill demands strict adherence to safety rules. “This hill is very famous and what people need to do, especially truck drivers, is just obey the sign that is at the top of the road. I am a truck driver, but not the big unit. I drive a seven-tonne unit and it always tell us to use the lower gear. Because the thing about it, if the bigger unit starts to pick up speed it is very hard to engage the lower gear and the truck will get away from you and this hill has no mercy and it will take your life,” Dockery said. He stressed that careless driving endangers not only the driver but everyone else on the road, noting that all workers deserve to return home safely to their families at the end of the day. “You just have to exercise caution and obey the rules of the road code. Obey the speed limit, use your low gear and come down the hill. [If not it] can take your life and also endanger the lives of others. People want to see their relatives return home after a long day of work and if you don’t do what you have to do, your family is going to miss you and you are also going to allow people to miss their family members. So just exercise caution,” he said.

Beyond calling for better driver compliance, Dockery has joined a growing chorus of local residents and transportation workers calling on the Jamaican government to speed up long-planned construction of the Spur Tree Hill Bypass, a project that would divert heavy through traffic away from the dangerous hill route. “It is very urgent, because this hill has no mercy, especially when it is wet or damp… The hill naturally is a threat for bigger units, so we just have to exercise caution as much as possible,” he said.

Multiple photos from the scene, taken by photojournalist Kasey Williams, show the mangled wreckage of the tractor trailer resting off the side of the road, spilled cement covering the nearby hillside, and a broken utility pole damaged in the crash.

On a grey, rain-threatened Easter Monday, residents of Amity Hall’s Gazer Road neighborhood in St James, Jamaica, surveyed the muddy wreckage of their properties and braced for more disaster. Just 24 hours after heavy downpours swept through parts of the parish, the community remained on edge: with the Montego River still choked with unremoved debris, another storm could bring a repeat of Sunday’s destructive flooding, leaving families displaced for a second consecutive day.

Sunday’s flood, which sent river water pouring over the banks and into residential properties, stirred up harrowing memories from last October’s Category 5 Hurricane Melissa. When the waters receded, they left behind thick layers of mud, tangled debris, and new losses that have set back slow, already fragile recovery efforts for local families.

Janet Dawkins, one of the hardest-hit residents, spoke with the Jamaica Observer amid the clean-up, her voice frazzled with worry. ‘People’s lives are in jeopardy, we are in jeopardy. The water flows right around our homes; we need help,’ she said, repeating her fear as dark storm clouds gathered overhead.

Dawkins explained that the small bridge connecting Gazer Road to the rest of Amity Hall suffered major damage in Sunday’s flood. If residents had not worked through the day to clear broken debris, the crossing would have been completely cut off, leaving the community isolated. ‘We cut up the debris with saws so we could get across. We packed it ourselves yesterday just to be able to leave the area,’ she added.

Local residents have pinned the blame for the repeat flooding on the buildup of trees and debris left uncleared in the Montego River since Hurricane Melissa struck last fall. That debris has piled up against the bridge, acting as a makeshift dam that forces rising flood waters to divert into the surrounding neighborhood instead of flowing downstream. For Dawkins, the damage went far beyond the flood that soaked her home: she lost all the building materials she had stockpiled to rebuild her small on-site shop, which was first destroyed in the hurricane.

‘I had stone and sand, everything washed away. Half my building blocks got carried off by the river; the impact is devastating,’ she said dejectedly. ‘I put up a new stall just three weeks after the storm, and yesterday the river came down and knocked it right down.’ Dawkins has joined her neighbors in an urgent appeal for authorities to clear the river, clearing the debris that puts the community at constant risk of repeated flooding. ‘We want help, we need help. I need help to rebuild my shop, and we need help to get the river flowing again. It can’t stay like this,’ she said.

For Mark Samuels, another Gazer Road resident, Sunday’s flood put his partner and young granddaughter in danger. Samuels was not home when waters rose to nearly two feet inside his house, and neighbors had to step in to evacuate his family before he returned after 8 p.m. When he arrived, he found his entire home — including the small shop he runs from the property — coated in mud and filled with debris. Samuels and his family spent most of Easter Monday shoveling muck out of their property, and the constant threat of future flooding has left him under crippling mental stress. The blocked section of the bridge sits just meters from his back door. ‘I know that when it rains, I can’t sleep. I’m always watching, always ready to run. I worry all the time about my family, and we are human beings too,’ he said.

Tameika Brown, another resident who spent all of Sunday and Monday cleaning up her flood-damaged home, said the disaster has reawakened the trauma of Hurricane Melissa. She was at church when Sunday’s rains began, and returned home late to find the same destruction she had worked for months to recover from. ‘It’s not a good feeling. It brings back all the trauma from Melissa, and it puts you right back in that place of being traumatized all over again. It’s not good, but this is our life now,’ she said resignedly.

Michael Allen, councillor for the Somerton Division, told the Observer he has been pressing authorities to clear the river channel since Hurricane Melissa passed last year. ‘Right after the hurricane, the whole river was blocked and families were already flooded out,’ he explained. Allen confirmed that clearing the Montego River falls under the responsibility of Jamaica’s National Works Agency (NWA), and he has repeatedly reached out to the agency to request cleanup crews. He also contacted Edmund Bartlett, Member of Parliament for St James East Central, who dispatched a tractor to the site — but heavy machinery was not suited to the work and could not clear the blocked channel.

Allen followed up three weeks ago to alert Bartlett that the tractor had failed, warning that any future rain would trigger flooding if the river was not cleared. Now, he says, his warning has come true. Beyond the damage to homes, Sunday’s flood also destroyed a section of Gazer Road that Allen had recently lobbied to repair at a cost of J$3.5 million. Work on the road was just completed last week. ‘Last week they finished the front section,’ he said wistfully.

Allen confirmed that 10 homes were directly impacted by Sunday’s flooding, and he has joined residents in calling for urgent cleanup of the river bed before more severe damage occurs. ‘If they had come when I called first, this would never have happened. The flood waters pushed the accumulated debris down to the bridge, and that’s when it flooded the whole neighborhood. Now residents are left to pick up the pieces,’ he said.