Leonardo Blair, Enterprise ReporterAFTER YEARS of talk and official consultation, Government's squatter management unit is still not off the ground. In the meantime, squatting has grown into an epidemic which state and private land owners are finding difficult to manage.
"It (squatting) has always been a great concern of the Government and it's something that must be dealt with urgently," said Minister of Agriculture and Land, Roger Clarke, on the weekend. "I just met with the Permanent Secretary on Thursday and we haven't even begun to look at strategy yet. But during the coming weeks we will be looking at it and some other issues."
316 SQUATTER
SITES ISLANDWIDE
The Ministry of Housing's Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP), which was conceived in 2000, identified at least 316 squatter sites islandwide.
Leader of the Opposition, Bruce Golding, said squatting has remained a serious issue despite efforts by Government to arrest the problem and regularise long-standing squatter communities. "When Operation PRIDE was announced it was supposed to do just that but it has lost its mandate. Operation PRIDE is building houses that cost millions of dollars that the poor can't afford," he said.
Government, he explained, needs to prevent further squatting; try to regularise those persons already on lands; and, create a programme to further the original mandate of Operation Pride.
Portmore's Mayor George Lee says squatting is now a serious problem which has become worse. "We need to tighten up the policy (on squatters).
"Municipalities like ours get caught in the middle," he told The Sunday Gleaner. "The municipality doesn't get money from housing (to deal with this) which I think is a mistake. We need to have money to deal with this housing problem as a first line of defence."
SQUATTER RESISTANCE
During this week the Portmore Mayor will be meeting with his council to see how best to help a private developer who recently tried to evict squatters from his land and was met with much resistance, including bullets.
Mr. Lee explained that he has already tried to seek help from the squatter management unit in the ministry, however, nobody could tell where it was.
An official of the recently-dissolved Ministry of Land and Environment, who requested anonymity, explained that the unit was still in the pipeline and had not yet been officially established. The Sunday Gleaner was directed to speak with Mr. Donovan Stanberry, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Land or Ms. Claudette Hall, a director in the ministry. Neither of these persons was available for comment.
But squatters like Patsy Wint, 52, of 'Racecourse' in Toll Gate, Clarendon are anxiously awaiting word on how the Government plans to deal with the issue.
Chucking them off the land, she says, cannot be the solution for so many of them.
"I would be grateful if they sell it (the land) to me. Mi nuh have no alternative. The Government couldn't so wicked fi see me reach so far, fi hear say them a go evacuate me again," she said.
Patsy has nowhere to run if she leaves. Next to her block and wood dwelling are two other wooden shacks occupied by her daughters. Another squatter Andrea Lewis, says her inability to pay her rent forced her onto land she knows nothing about.
"I don't know whose land it is. I hear it belongs to Government and I hear it belongs to (the) HEART (Trust). Right now you look for anything, you just can't settle down," she said.
And the stories continued. The near marshland occupied by these squatters is soggy and flooded in several places after light rainfall last week; not much different from the land in nearby Portland Cottage.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Gleaner, former consultant with the Ministry of Housing and Parliamentarian, Arnold Bertram, said that some 47 of the 111 sites developed under Operation PRIDE were previously squatter sites. At their retreat in January, members of the Cabinet agreed that 30,000 houses had to be built annually over the next five years to meet the country's housing demand. Government's contribution to the housing sector over the next three years will be in the region of $30 billion to provide shelter for almost 35,000 Jamaicans.
