Dawn Ritch
AT THE risk of being redundant, I'd like to point out that the money in the National Housing Trust is for housing. The whole purpose of the mandatory contribution of three per cent by every working person was to provide low-income housing. And only for its members.
A trust is a specific thing. I know that the law establishing the National Housing Trust has been amended. But the amendments must make it look very much like the Constitution of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). That constitution has been amended so many times that today it is a Gordian knot. Nobody can find the beginning or the end. But an amendment can be found to justify just about anything, with the result that the party finds great difficulty making sense of itself...with the usual and predictable deleterious results.
The National Housing Trust is becoming no different. I don't know how it got from low-income housing to building public statues, but it did. Not only that, but it built Emancipation Park, and is providing $12 million for a development plan for Montego Bay. When it built the park and statues, its chairman, Kingsley Thomas, announced that the act establishing the NHT had been appropriately amended. When it gave $12 million to the Greater Montego Bay Redevelopment Committee, nothing further was said. But the JLP MP, Dr. Horace Chang, gave an explanation.
According to another newspaper, he said that "the bulk of the NHT funds would be used to undertake a traffic management study and to upgrade the demographics of the city". Since when did the NHT start to give grants to committees, and have opposition MPs allocate them?
The Urban Develop-ment Corporation and the Planning Institute of Jamaica are already a charge on the public purse for development plans and statistics. Indeed Dr. Paul Robertson is now the PNP Minister of Development. So why doesn't he get busy in Montego Bay, instead of the Housing Trust? And where is Dr. Vin Lawrence these days?
TORMENTED
It seems the Most Honourable P.J. Patterson Prime Minister of Jamaica is tormented by the sight of billions of dollars growing in the Housing Trust and in the National Insurance Fund. The latter is building highways instead of increasing the widow's mite and paying it promptly. And instead of providing shelter for the working poor in Montego Bay, the former is doing studies on traffic patterns, and entering speculative tourism ventures in Trelawny. Jamaicans are deprived of affordable housing, many of them living in carton boxes and under trees. Yet a 4,000-acre property known as Harmony Cove is to be developed for foreign visitors partly funded by the Housing Trust. What kind of muddle-headed priorities are these? Michael Manley must be turning in his grave.
The Most Honourable announced this venture in his Budget presentation, saying that the National Housing Trust and the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ) were funding the tourism project, and bringing it to market to look for joint venture partners. The NIBJ was established by bauxite levy money for just such an eventuality. I therefore have absolutely no problem with their role. But to put Housing Trust money into speculative ventures, even in tourism, is to take money from the Jamaican working poor under false pretences. Where are the trade unions these days?
A subsequent report stated that the property had been bought for five million pounds sterling from an English aristocrat. But no mention was made of his name, nor of the Housing Trust as having paid him. Kingsley Thomas, on "Perkins on Line", said that the money came from the Development Bank of Jamaica's (DBJ) investment in the equity of Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB) which it sold. There is no reason why DBJ should have speculated with public funds in a venture capital operation. But as some are wont to say "Funds are fungible".
SETTLING DEBTS
Mr. Kingsley Thomas is the chairman of the National Housing Trust, and managing director of the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ). I know there is talk of a merger of NIBJ with DBJ, but not until some debts at the former organisation have been settled, or more likely, wished away. In what capacity was Mr. Thomas speaking about Harmony Cove on radio? In recent reports DBJ seems to be the organisation doing the 4,000-acre development. Its name has been called, and Mr. Thomas has been spokesman for the venture. This is the same Mr. Thomas who was in charge of that other mega-billion project, Highway 2000.
In the meantime there has been no further official mention of the Housing Trust's financial involvement in the Harmony Cove project. Is this because, despite the interlocking Mr. Thomas, the Most Honourable has thought better of it, and changed his mind? Or is it because the project is not going to materialise? NIBJ gave money to Minister Phillip Paulwell which he frittered away on foreign companies that provided no jobs for Jamaicans. It was a waste of bauxite levy money raised from foreign companies. Again Michael Manley must be turning in his grave.
A precedent has been set by Mr. Thomas himself, who presided over the amending of the law establishing the NHT. A mandate that can now divert housing funds into statues, parks, studies and speculative tourism ventures is a dangerous thing with no end in sight, except the end of affordable low-income housing in Jamaica as we know it. Indeed the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) chaired by Dr. Vin Lawrence is going to be in charge of low-income housing in inner-city Kingston. Something it was never set up to do.
More and more therefore, this aspect of national life resembles the JLP. Is the Most Honourable vexed with Vin, and only talking to Kingsley? And is this why the UDC is doing housing and the NHT development? The $30 billion in the National Insurance Scheme may soon be hived off and placed under Kingsley Thomas, so that the Most Honourable can have prime ministerial direction of it. If Patterson ever does leave a legacy, nobody will be able to make head or tail of it. Because Jamaicans will have no jobs, no housing and no pension. Robbed in the dead of night.
