COMAND criticises the Church By Keril Wright, Staff Reporter WESTERN BUREAU: THE COMMUNITY Organisation for Management and Sustainable Development (COMAND), which works to promote development in inner-city communities, has criticised the Church for neglecting to provide housing for its members. "The Church must assist with building houses for their members," chairman of the organisation O. Dave Allen charged Tuesday at a meeting of the group in Montego Bay at the Wexford Court Hotel. Allen, in the presence of dozens of community-based organisation personnel, from various marginalised communities in western Jamaica, declared that the Church must take a more proactive role in providing housing solutions for its members. "You hear about people coming from foreign to build houses for needy people here in Jamaica and what is the Church doing," he asked? "Building more Churches." He indicated that the conditions in many of these informal communities were conducive to passing on poverty to generations to come and highlighted the urgent need for assistance from the Church. COMAND also announced that they had received a grant of $400,000 to assist with housing in St. James. Allen said the organisation had sought the assistance of the Catholic Church in order that appraisals to determine needy cases would be done impartially However, churches in the west, commenting on the statements made by Mr. Allen, charge that their efforts to assist members with housing go unnoticed because it is a not publicised. Pastor Paul Gallimore of the Kings Chapel Pentecostal Church in Montego Bay said the criticisms were unfair as far as his church was concerned. "We have a system in place called the Men's Fellowship which assists with housing needs for our members," he said. He noted that the Church had also, through Food for the Poor, secured housing for two persons in St. James who were neither Church members nor apart of the immediate community. "You see we are working to help and housing is certainly not the only area we help in," he added. Similarly Monsignor Herbert Panton of the Roman Catholic Church said they were definitely helping on a consistent basis with housing needs as well as in other areas. "I know definitely that we have helped with housing, it doesn't come to the fore until someone asks about it but we are working," he told The Gleaner. Monsignor Panton said the Catholics' work with the poor and needy was much apart of their daily routine. "It's what we do. We hardly stop sometimes to think about it," he said, indicating the Church's AIDS hospice, orphanage and other programmes. According to Food for the Poor the Church is the major organisation that makes referrals for persons with housing needs.
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