Gordon Robinson | The Guy Lombardo show!

Whenever Gene Autry and I played against Dr S. Blank and Jimmy Hunchback, politics was never far away.

It’s been a minute since this pair featured in these often arcane Tuesday columns. So, for late-comers, Blank was a UWI maintenance worker who introduced himself to us as “Dr S. Blank, Dean of the Faculty of Dominoes”. His partner Jimmy was simultaneously the worst and luckiest player we encountered. No matter how hard Jimmy tried to ‘dash wey’ the game, it would somehow return to him.

Games against Blank and Jimmy were Friday night affairs at Taylor Hall. This particular Friday night, Blank, a die-hard Michael Manley supporter, insisted on praising the Land Lease programme.

“Yu see how my govament jook dem wid land lease?” he chirped. “Small farmer get land fi cultivate instead a wuk fi develop Bucky Massa land.”

Since we’d long ago disavowed politics, we only nodded vaguely. Jimmy Hunchback proceeded to kill Blank’s double-five but, somehow, the game was blocked and double-five counted least.

INTEGRATED APPROACH

Project Land Lease was launched in 1973, ostensibly as an integrated approach to rural development. About 23,000 small farmers were provided with plots, technical advice, inputs (e.g., fertiliser; access to credit) on 18,000 hectares islandwide. Land Lease was intended to stimulate agricultural use. It didn’t pretend to address Jamaica’s chronic housing shortage.

In 2014, National Land Agency reported only 2,000 active land lease accounts remained. On September 23, 2021, The Gleaner reported that concerns were being expressed “regarding the length of time it’s taking for [Keeblemont Farm lessees] to have their titles…”.

Carlton Campbell, an advocate and one of the 300-plus persons on that farm from 1976, said the Agriculture Ministry promised purchase prices and Lot numbers would be known a year after the final survey, which was completed in 1996. He said: “From 1997, there was another property in Clarendon that was giving trouble … and from there, everything starts to go downhill.”

May Pen Mayor Winston Maragh reportedly asked the Lessees to be patient.

On the housing side, NHT was founded in 1976 with the mission to increase available housing stock and provide financial assistance to contributors needing support to build, buy or repair. Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) was incorporated on April 30, 1998. Its core function is to provide mortgage servicing and shelter solutions on the open market (to ensure financial viability) and low-cost housing solutions under the Operation Pride programme.

TWO-PRONGED ATTACK

So by 2000, Government mounted a two-pronged attack on the chronic lack of safe, affordable housing for the vulnerable. But, thanks once again to Westminster’s do-as-you-like ethical bankruptcy, Operation Pride went horribly wrong, and it appeared some contractors made merry with taxpayers’ money, while providing relatively few housing solutions.

The 2019 Economic and Social Survey, showed that, for pre-pandemic years 2016-2019, completed NHT housing solutions numbered 1,323; 1,212; 2,214; 1,953 (preliminary). These paltry numbers produced an embarrassing 83 per cent increase in 2018 and a 12 per cent decrease in 2019.

In HAJ’s 2018-19 Annual Report, the Managing Director informed:

• HAJ’s “major focus” to complete and sell Phase 2 Luana Gardens, St Elizabeth, (189 serviced lots) “were re-scheduled to 2019-20”;

• New starts planned – Bernard Lodge/Shooters Hill (St Catherine), Rhyne Park/Grange Pen/Brownfield (St James) and Mona (St Andrew), were also re-scheduled to 2019-20.

It’s in this historical context one of Government’s parliamentary Capulets, from a political platform, disgorged this insensitive, partisan buffoonery:

“Everywhere in my constituency that’s unsafe to live, Comrades live there.

“Anywhere river going to wash wey, Comrades live there. Anywhere that’s a garbage dump, Comrades live there, and is not Labour party put them there.”

Sigh.

This apparent attempt to deflect (from an islandwide squatting debate revived by PM’s order to remove selected squatters near Clifton, for which he was roundly criticised) was inept at best. But you can depend on PNP to fight ineptitude with tone-deaf incompetence. In defending Juliet’s 2022 faux pas, JLP trolls resurrected irrelevant 2003 Operation Pride scandals. Thereafter, PNP facilitated an interminable cass-cass about Operation Pride, riddled with tiresome finger-pointing, until JLP trolls successfully deflected attention from Juliet’s intemperate outburst.

Instead of permitting deflection upon deflection, PNP should’ve stayed on today’s issues, forcing JLP to admit unsafe housing is a product of 50 years of political failure. Astute political opposition would’ve forced Juliet to detail her proposals to fix that deeply entrenched injustice.

But Jamaican politicians prefer finger-pointing to solutions. As my late, great Uncle, mentor, hero and friend J.D. Hall would protest, “this MUST be the Guy Lombardo Show!”

Peace and Love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.