Gov’t should do more to help ordinary J’cans own homes

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Currently I am a public sector worker in this lovely country of Jamaica. I have worked for the Government since I was approximately 18 years old. Sadly, in recent times, it has become hopeless for someone of my age and status. I do not have a very large family. I am not well known. I am just a common Jamaican and so I will have to work twice as hard to try and make life in this country. I have paid my taxes and had contributions drawn from the little thing I get each month known as a salary. I have tried to make much of it, with a grateful heart.

Just recently, I felt the urge to try to again see if I can acquire a little piece of this rock to call my own. It was then that I realised that the system is set for people to fail and to do so miserably – unless they are from affluent families, or have alliances. The country is built upon the backs and shoulders of hard-working people from the middle and lower class (but) who lose approximately more than half of their income to taxes. Still, when it is time to receive some benefit, it is either accompanied by a frenzy of red tape, or persons are so frustrated they give up.

We claim that we want to be developed, yet our system is still using age to determine whether, and how much benefit we receive from the National Housing Trust (NHT). For people who would have been working in this country for so long to be told that because of their age, they can only get “a scraps” to buy or build a house is a gross insult to the Jamaican working-class people. The announcement came in the recent budget presentation, that come July 1, 2025, the NHT benefit is raised from 7.5 million to 9 million. However, we have seen over time that as the benefits are increased, so too do the developers’ cost of the houses they build.

MUST WE DIE IN POVERTY?

Can’t the NHT and the Government of Jamaica do something about this? Will some of us be born in poverty and then die in it as our ancestors did? Are we to be consistently paying taxes and receive no benefits from the country we live in and work for?

Salaries are so small that the majority of people can only pay their bills and peradventure find a small amount to purchase groceries to take them up to the point of “when it done, it done”. Why can’t the Government do something to help teachers, other civil servants and the common Jamaican people to acquire their own land or house? Wouldn’t this be a sign of upward mobility and development?

The words of Dr Martin Luther King still echo across the annals of time: “I have a dream”. I, too, have a dream that common Jamaican people like myself and many others will own our own piece of this rock we call home, without having to run away to other people’s place to make it in life. I have a dream that it will not be so hard, and a level of equity will exist so that who have will allow for those who do not have as yet.

DWIGHT D. DAWKINS