BUSINESS owners in Black River, St Elizabeth, are urgently seeking financing, direct communication, and reassurance about the town’s future as the Government’s recovery plans seem sluggish eight months after Hurricane Melissa.

“There’s a lull in Black River,” said president of the Chamber of Commerce Kadian Myers Brown. “I wouldn’t say that there isn’t anything that’s going on, but what we would have expected, seven months now, going on eight months after the storm, there is nothing to really talk about in terms of this new resilience that we hear them [the Government] speaking about.

Speaking alongside members of the St Elizabeth Homecoming Foundation and key community stakeholders during yesterday’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s main offices in St Andrew, Myers Brown highlighted the struggles of numerous entrepreneurs in Black River, who lost their entire livelihoods after the devastation of the Category 5 hurricane, which struck on October 28, 2025.