The De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF) has ap­proved US$670,000 in emer­gency grant fund­ing for Ja­maica fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

The funds will as­sist hu­man­i­tar­i­an and re­cov­ery ef­forts af­ter the cat­e­go­ry five storm, which claimed lives and caused wide­spread dam­age to in­fra­struc­ture and com­mu­ni­ties across the is­land.

CAF said the grant will com­ple­ment aid be­ing pro­vid­ed by re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners. It has al­so helped co­or­di­nate bi­lat­er­al as­sis­tance from El Sal­vador, in­clud­ing 37 tonnes of re­lief sup­plies and 300 emer­gency per­son­nel to sup­port Ja­maica’s re­sponse op­er­a­tions.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, who serves as chair­man of CAF’s board, wel­comed the move and said the board ful­ly sup­ports the bank’s hu­man­i­tar­i­an and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to Ja­maica.