The government of Jamaica will be expanding the ROOFS programme by an additional $9.65 billion.

The announcement was made by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness during a special media briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister moments ago.

According to Dr Holness, the government has spent already spent $84 billion in hurricane relief so far, a figure he describes as the largest such expenditure in the country’s history.

Meanwhile, $750 million has been allocated to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management for roof reconstruction work.

In addition, another $700 million has been set aside to make payments under the modular housing programme and $100 million has been allocated to local government for the same modular housing programme in Shrewsbury, Westmoreland.

Prime Minister Holness says the government is hoping to wrap up recovery by the end of January next year, and shift focus exclusively to reconstruction and advancing one of the largest public investment programmes under the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority, NaRRA.

The prime minister says to accelerate the build-out under NaRRA, an agreement will be signed with the United Kingdom to deploy three UK firms to assist in the process.

Dr Holness says the programme will be funded equally by the UK and Jamaica.

He says the team to be deployed was responsible for post flood reconstruction in Peru.