By Andrew Green, Staff Reporter
Christopher Honeywell - File
THE RESIGNATION of National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) managing director Christopher Honeywell, comes less than a month after the overruling of his policy to remove squatters from Portmore Villas in Portmore.
About 250 families in the St. Catherine squatter community had protested after being served eviction notices by the Squatter Management Unit of the Ministry of Water and Housing in November, last year. Mr. Honeywell stated categorically in early December that the squatters would be removed.
"They will have to go," he told The Financial Gleaner in mid-December. "As soon as we have the Minister's approval we will be taking action."
But by then, the eviction notification period had expired and the squatters had been granted a three week reprieve. As well, Cherie Lee, director of Operation PRIDE, the Programme for Resettlement and Integrated Development Enterprise, had previously assured residents of the settlement that their homes would not be bulldozed, despite their receiving the eviction notices.
The NHDC, formed from a merger of the Caribbean Finance Corporation and the National Housing Corporation, is the entity that oversees Operation PRIDE. It is a state-owned company which falls under the portfolio of the Water and Housing Ministry.
About 1,200 families live in the squatter community. It is being upgraded under an Operation PRIDE informal settlement regularisation programme.
The plan for Portmore Villas identifies only 843 lots, which include residential, recreational and commercial lots. About 379 of the residential lots have already been completed under the first phase of the project and another 179 are now being completed.
Mr. Honeywell said in December that the government has already spent $91 million on the project.
The residents, some of whom have lived in the community for more than 10 `years, said they were served notices even though they were involved in the settlement regularisation programme and had contributed more than $9 million to the Portmore Villas Provident Society. They made their complaint through Jamaica Labour Party spokesman on Development, Lands and Water, Andrew Holness.
Mr. Honeywell said the majority of those persons who received notices were illegally occupying the houses and were not contributors to the Society. He also said that the small number of Provident Society contributors who received notices would be evicted from lots which were not assigned to them. Those persons would be relocated to their assigned lots. He said the rest, "must go."
Then in mid-January, Mrs. Lee announced that only a few of the 250 squatter families would be evicted. She said that from her discussions with the residents, only a few persons who were served notices were illegal squatters, having made no contributions to the Provident Society and had settled on the land. These persons, she said, would not be guaranteed any land, as priority would be given to the contributors to the Provident Society.
Mr. Honeywell was managing director of the Ports Security Corps before being appointed head of the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) in June last year. An attorney, he was previously a partner in the Corporate Area law firm of Clinton Hart and Company.
