Only 1.8 per cent. That’s how much of the $1.44 billion donated after Hurricane Melissa had actually been spent by the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management as of February 23, 2026, according to an auditor general report, and Beenie Man isn’t surprised one bit.
The dancehall veteran sat down with ITV News reporter Cree-Summer Haughton and took aim at the Holness administration’s handling of the millions that poured in after the Category 5 storm tore through sections of Jamaica in October 2025.
His verdict was blunt, and it landed on one of the UK’s biggest commercial news platforms.
This is nothing new that the Government get the money, the Government distribute the money the wrong way,” he said. “The people who supposed to get the money haven’t been getting any.”
The report put ODPEM’s spending at just $26.2 million by late February. For Beenie Man, that figure fits a pattern Jamaicans already know too well.
“These things, it’s a regular thing that happens,” he said. “The money comes in and you nuh see where it go.”
Interestingly, he didn’t cast himself as the man to fix it. “It’s not for me to talk of it. It’s for the whole country to come up and stand up as one,” he said, putting the responsibility back on ordinary Jamaicans to unite and demand accountability.
The interview didn’t stop at relief money. In a second clip shared to ITV News’ Instagram, Beenie Man waded into the long running fight over public beach access, a subject Haughton is reportedly investigating.
Campaigners told ITV that less than one per cent of Jamaica’s coastline is freely accessible to the public, blaming private developments and restrictions for squeezing ordinary people out.
The Government disputes that number, saying 17 percentage points of the 21 per cent of coastline classified as public beach are free to access.
Officials have also pointed to investment in public beach parks and other initiatives aimed at opening up the shoreline. Beenie Man doesn’t sound convinced.
“There’s no action that you can take,” he said. “And the Government come and seh, ‘we own this land.’ They’re the Government.”
He didn’t spare those with the power to step in either. “And the people who can do something, they’re not doing anything either,” he added.
Hellshire Beach in St Catherine is the spot he kept coming back to. Known for steamed fish, escovitch fish, lobster and shrimp, it’s a place where vendors and families have deep ties to the surrounding community.
“The beaches that we’re talking about is beaches where people live on, especially, mi can tell you bout Hellshire Beach,” he said. For him, this isn’t an abstract policy debate but a question of real neighbours and real jobs.
“I know people who live there,” he explained. “Their job is to clean the beach, make sure the beach is right and everything.”
Then came his warning, which sounded less like a soundbite and more like a promise. “If the Government comes for that beach, there’s going to be a fight. There’s going to be a strong struggle because people live there, all of them life.”
