Ronald Thwaites | That implementation gap

You couldn't help but admire Karl Samuda's passion about landownership and titling as he remembered the reasons for Bogle and Gordon's struggles. He was speaking on the 153rd anniversary of their execution that was observed recently.

While commending him, I sat watching the enthused parliamentarians and reflecting how ashamed we should be that many of the same obstacles to landownership that obtained in 1865 are still encumbering people's progress today. And there is very little being done about it.

The process of confirming landownership by way of a title still remains a tedious and expensive exercise beyond the pockets and understanding of a majority of our people. The state of the law is not the main problem. There are many statutes that we have passed over the years to get around some of the restrictions affecting legal tenure.

What is lacking is the vision and the political will to make it a priority for many more of our people to have security, access to credit, and to achieve the social uplift of being property owners.

The requirements to subdivide land still ties titling to the completion of infrastructure, despite legal power to delink the two. Samuda's own ministry is often unwilling to carry through the stated intention of the administration.

Count on one hand the instances when the law limiting the eviction of squatters has been invoked. Why? It is because we lack a coherent settlement policy that recognises as fundamental that plans and opportunities must be available for all our people to live somewhere.

Absent that and its enforcememt, people do the best they can, most often without reference to legal strictures. How else could close to a million Jamaicans be living on land over which they have no tenure?

 

GETTING WORSE

 

And the situation is getting worse. Where must the near 60 per cent of the workforce who earn minimum wage, or close to it, find a decent place to rent, let alone to buy? And when we scream at them about forming better families, and protecting the vulnerable, how do you do that when you don't have stability at home?

Where is the affordable housing to acccomodate the low-paying, labour-intensive industries on which we are pinning our hopes for sustainable, inclusive growth? Just look at Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and urban St Catherine. Any surprise that these include troubled communities?

As it is, law, practice and inattention exclude the uplift of landownership in scores of brownfield sites across Jamaica, where no long-pocketed developer is going to invest in the level of infrastructure necessary for municipal approval. But were titles to be issued, no doubt with appropriate covenants requiring owners to contribute proportionately to basic services, capital could become available for development.

Among other problems, Operation PRIDE could not achieve its best outcomes because the infrastructure standards and costs were unaffordable by the State and unachievable to settlers who had no title to pledge.

But the hundreds of thousands of people in squatter communities are going nowhere, and it is time, as the present minister in charge of housing acknowledges, that conclusive moves be taken to regularise what exists and to prevent further squattting.

The nation should revive the PRIDE project with no more public investment than the provision of a survey plan to each prospective owner. Then, cause the issuance of a registered title to each plot (there are thousands already issued and sittting in government vaults) on affordable terms and with suitable requirements for further upgrading when required. For those who really cannot pay anything, give them a life tenancy at peppercorn and recover costs later.

 

NOTHING WILL CHANGE

 

Churches, the Government and other large landowners will continue to lose land to squatters until settlement areas are designated in each parish with proper conditions for occupancy and the mechanisms for enforcement. This is very important. For if, given reasonable alternatives, people still choose to settle where they please without penalty, nothing else will ever change.

Recently, the prime minister bemoaned the implementation gap gripping the country. He should know. Listen to ministers speak and you will hear more proposals and intentions than completed actions. Remember $18,000, 5-in-4, no auxiliary fees, and all the rest?

But this one could be different. I am hoping that Minister Samuda will add further distinction to his long public career by insisting on reversing the land exclusion and misuse that are the hangovers of the era of Paul Bogle and George William Gordon.

What a great way that would be to honour their lives and the multitude who struggled with them!

- Ronald Thwaites is member of parliament for Kingston Central and opposition spokesman on education. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.