Dawn Ritch, Contributor
I SAW A headline in the Observer newspaper recently which quite shocked me. It said "NHT seeks builders for cheap houses. New apartment complexes to replace inner-city slums" (April 7, 2003).
It wasn't the notion of apartment complexes replacing inner-city slums which sounds like a pipe dream to me but the idea that the Government now needed the private sector to provide low-income housing when this was the area in which the public sector has always excelled.
I got my start in advertising 30 years ago when my agency landed Sugar Industry Housing Ltd., a subsidiary of the Sugar Industry Authority. It did hugely important work in a highly accomplished fashion, and we were proud to work for them.
Sugar Industry Housing (SIH) built Shrewsbury, Hayes Phase One and Two, Lionel Town, Lime Tree Grove, Iter Boreale, Salt Pond, and Ricketts River, among others.
The housing schemes were mainly in Clarendon and St. Catherine. They did not run over budget and, when they were completed, there were no demonstrations by the new owners about promises broken, or services not provided.
As a provider of low-income housing nobody in the private sector could beat them. Up until a few years ago the National Housing Trust (NHT) would buy into their schemes, because the SIH by now was building low-income schemes not only for sugar workers, but for everybody. This is why I was shocked by the headline, because the Government ought not to need help in something they do better than anybody else.
A SORRY TALE OF WASTE
Imagine my horror when I subsequently learnt that SIA had been wound down, closed up, and all its records sent to the Government Record Centre. Without a word, the Government just buried the company.
Apart from the initial seed money of $5 million in 1974 from the Sugar Stabilization Fund to set up the company with a mandate to provide housing for sugar workers, here was an enterprise that as far as we know, never cost the Government a red cent, and was never a charge on the Budget.
In the last 20 years SIH is estimated to have provided 3,500 low-income houses and 10,000 housing solutions or service lots to the Government, and that does not include build on own land, and home improvement. Why bury a company like that? And who was responsible?
A sorry tale of false pride and sheer stupidity emerged. Everybody knows that sugar has been in trouble for many years.
So the sugar workers would not be able to buy low-income housing in quite the same way as they did before. But that shouldn't matter because the NHT is hugely rich from taxpayer contributions, including those of sugar workers, and used to provide mortgages for SIH schemes and take some of the houses in these schemes for workers in other categories.
Turns out that the management of SIH and the chairman of the NHT, Kingsley Thomas, had a big dust-up.
The NHT cut off financing from the SIH over the Sugar Industry Redundancy Housing Programme. Sugar workers had been given redundancy by closing sugar factories, and the Government had wanted to capture some of that money before it all went on wine, women and song.
It is noteworthy that not once did we hear the name of Sugar Industry Housing in all the money scandals of Dr. Karl Blythe's Operation PRIDE. I am of the opinion that had they been involved, no billions would have been wasted. But I will go no further on this subject as I understand it is now in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
I, therefore, asked my source why hadn't the SIH managed these projects.
I was told that SIH indeed had been asked to do 80-odd housing projects in Operation PRIDE.
The then Minister of Housing and Water, Dr. Karl Blythe, had also wanted, however, to take over the company with its assets, because it was felt that SIH should fall under his portfolio and he wanted to make use of their capabilities.
Naturally the SIA balked at the idea of giving it to him for free. The SIA is under the portfolio of the Minister of Agriculture, Roger Clarke, who it appears did not lift a finger to save the company.
PUBLIC POLICY ON ITS EAR
Since no one could agree, Cabinet issued a directive that the company should be closed down while it still had enough resources to pay off the people who had worked for it. The corporate prognosis was grim indeed. It was either close or see the company starve to death for lack of work.
Many people who worked for SIH couldn't believe it. They had done a good job and thought they were being punished for it. At least that's how it seemed. Somebody even went to the Prime Minister P.J. Patterson and begged for a stay of execution, saying the company had never lost money, and was providing a valuable social service in a highly professional manner.
Word quickly came back that the company should stay open, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
Then the SIA was informed that the Ministry of Housing was not willing to pay anything for the company, and that the 80-odd housing projects were to be returned to the Ministry. And that was the end of that.
This is why Kingsley Thomas now has to advertise for outsiders to build cheap housing. The Government has closed down its only competent housing contractor and manager, although the company didn't need any handouts and wasn't looking for any.
And all this at the very time when money was being spent by the tanker load on low-income housing schemes done poorly and wastefully, by a lot of other people with incomparable credentials.
This is yet another example of public policy stood on its ear, and par for the course with this Government. If it's working, mash it up. If it's not working, throw money at it and think of it as life support. But whose life?
