Families displaced by Hurricane Melissa are set to receive modular homes as the bulk of 2,500 units purchased by the National Housing Trust (NHT) under a $3.1 billion emergency contract with Chinese firm Jiangsu Zhenhuai Construction Group arrive on the island.
“The supply chain and delivery timeline are progressing steadily. All expenditure to date is within budget and there have been no variances to the contract to date,” Deputy General Manager for Corporate Affairs Dwayne Berbick told the Financial Gleaner.
The contract is among the largest single awards for modular housing, based on a review of Government contract disclosures. Berbick said 1,500 of the 2,500 units are already on the island. The remaining 1,000 are to arrive by September.
The NHT subsequently said installation is a separate multi-agency process and that it could not provide a total count of homes already handed over to displaced families.
The contract covers the supply and delivery of foldable modular housing units across the five worst-affected parishes – Westmoreland, St Elizabeth, St James, Trelawny and Hanover.
The NHT selected the foldable modular system after evaluating a mix of local, regional and international suppliers across multiple building technologies. Berbick said the units offered “the ideal combination of rapid installation, portability, cost-effectiveness and requisite safety ratings, including cooling insulation, and wind and earthquake resistance”.
Jiangsu Zhenhuai has an established track record on government projects. It is the lead contractor on the redevelopment of the Spanish Town Hospital in St Catherine, a six-storey facility being built under the Health Systems Strengthening Programme with Inter-American Development Bank funding. It is also building the outpatient department at the May Pen Hospital in Clarendon, which broke ground in July 2025 and is on track for completion early next year.
Jiangsu Zhenhuai, which operates across the Caribbean from a Jamaican base, “was deemed most competitive from the pool”, Berbick said. “They demonstrated the immediate capacity to source and deliver these specific units with the high degree of urgency.”
The emergency housing contract has meanwhile drawn interest from other local providers.
“Our technical team has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of these submissions and is now maintaining a centralised, verified database of these suppliers,” Berbick said.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall near New Hope in Westmoreland last October as a Category 5 storm with winds of up to 185 miles per hour. It displaced approximately 279,000 persons across more than 90,000 households, with thousands still in emergency shelters or informal housing nearly 10 months later.
neville.graham@gleanerjm.com
UPDATE: An earlier version of this article indicated that the contract covered installation. The NHT subsequently clarified that its contract with Jiangsu Zhenhuai covers supply and delivery only, and that installation is a separate process involving multiple Government agencies. Due to this multi-agency arrangement, the NHT said it could not confirm how many families have received homes to date. The agency also said the remaining units are now expected to arrive by September rather than July.
