![]() In 2021, the current Administration took the decision that NHT funds would be channelled to the building of houses. Perkins argued for many years that NHT contribution was an injustice visited especially upon the poor because the majority of contributors would never live to benefit from their contributions.Ībolishing the NHT on these grounds would be the equivalent, in my view, of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I once heard ace journalist, the late Wilmot "Motty" Perkins say on radio that contributors to the NHT would be way better off if governments refrained from taking monies from their earnings. Thousands of Jamaicans have benefited from various housing solutions since NHT's inception. Whatever its weaknesses, the National Housing Trust (NHT), which was established in 1976 by the late Michael Manley, is one of his genuine and most worthwhile achievements. I think any self-respecting Administration - especially given our colonial past - has not just a responsibility but a duty to deliberately foster inclusive and affordable homeownership. Among other things, owning one's own "piece of ground", as the late South African singer, and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba phrased it, is integral to what the late Professor Rex Nettleford called "smaddisation". It is not difficult, therefore, to understand why most Jamaicans desperately try to own a piece of this rock. The term labourer or "common labourer", for obvious reasons, is not a term of endearment. Our fore parents, certainly the vast majority, did not have access to or own land. Why? In summary, landlessness, among other things, was used by our former colonial masters as method of systematic control. While that is indeed the case in some foreign lands - some famous for colonising others - Jamaicans, by and large, have not evolved to those higher heights, and I sincerely hope we never do. Long-term renting, not ownership, some tell us is all the rage in some countries. 'Rent house' is not the final destination of any Jamaican I know. Most if not all Jamaicans want to own a house and/or piece of land here at home. PNP General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell. Myopic thinkers will ruin us, if we let them. Consequently, they do not understand that it is possible to be very radical and, at the same time, still be contemporary. Why? They are preoccupied with being discounted with a society which no longer exists. ![]() Some among us who vie for very high political office just do not get that. Today, the have-nots and those who do not have enough can best be helped by teaching them how to become the owners of the pond in which they catch their fish. They are also fervent subscribers to the outdated view that it is better to give a person a fish, rather than teach an individual how to catch fish for him/herself. As merchants of ignorance, they ride like witches on the faulty broomsticks of ideology, fear, and dependence. One of the awful consequences of wilful blindness is that the voluntarily impaired often take on the persona of Luddites. Wilful blindness, whatever its origin and/or motivation, is a malady upon our politics. John Heywood, renowned English writer and poet There are none so blind as those who will not see. The NHT head office in New Kingston (Photo: Observer file)
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