Sinclair: PM is right that NHT is not a charity
Published:Wednesday | June 8, 2022 | 12:06 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
GOVERNMENT SENATOR Charles Sinclair has come out swinging against the Opposition People’s National Party’s (PNP) recent criticisms of Prime Minister Andrew Holness over the handling of the National Housing Trust (NHT), arguing that Holness is correct to describe the entity as not being a charity agency.
Speaking on Sunday during the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Cambridge divisional meeting at the Anchovy High School in St James, Sinclair took pointed digs at Zuleika Jess, the PNP’s caretaker for Clarendon Central, who had described Holness as out of order for saying that the NHT is a financial institution and should not be treated as a charity by the working class.
“This morning, someone sent on social media a video of an attorney, and her tagline in the video was that the prime minister must take his hands off the NHT. I said, ‘How can you be saying to the administration and the head of the administration that they must take their hands off the NHT?’ The NHT falls under the prime minister’s portfolio, so how must the prime minister take his hands off the NHT?” Sinclair demanded.
“I hear this young lady up in Clarendon, run off her mouth that the prime minister must take his hands off the NHT. But the prime minister said that the NHT is not a charity, and the prime minister is right, because if it were a charity, then all we would be doing is just ‘gi weh, gi weh, gi weh’, and there would be no return,” Sinclair added.
INCEPTION AND OBJECTIVE
The NHT was founded in 1976 by Michael Manley, a former prime minister and PNP president, to lend money at low interest rates to contributors to finance the purchase, repair or construction of homes.
However, successive governments, including Holness’ administration, have tapped into the NHT for billion-dollar projects not related to housing over the years, as well as to plug holes in Budgets.
Meanwhile, Robert Nesta Morgan, the minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, with responsibility for information, took his own potshot at the PNP during Sunday’s meeting, targeting the Opposition’s track record in providing housing during its time in Government.
“Between 1989 and 2016, the JLP only ruled the country for four years. The PNP has served 23 of the last 33 years of Government in Jamaica. We would have thought the PNP would have built 100,000 houses by now, but when I look at the numbers, when we took over in 2016, the PNP had built only 1,500 houses,” said Morgan.
“The PNP has a lot of crimes against the Jamaican population to answer for. The PNP deserves a political life sentence. They do not know how to build houses for poor people,” Morgan added.
“If the PNP was doing such a good job of building up Jamaica, how we a fix up so much road and hospital? Why we a fix up so much police station? The PNP is practising the politics of the 1990s, while Andrew Holness is a digital prime minister,” said Morgan.
Sunday’s meeting was held to affirm Generation 2000 General Secretary Javin Baker into the division’s chairmanship, succeeding current St James Southern Member of Parliament Homer Davis in the role.