‘We don’t plagiarise’
SCHOOLFIELD, St Elizabeth — Prime Minister Andrew Holness has hit back at members of the Opposition for their recent comments that the Government should be giving the former credit for plans to develop a rent-to-own agreement for housing.
Opposition Senator Peter Bunting last Sunday, while addressing the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Mandeville Divisional Conference at Manchester High School, said the Government was “bankrupt” of ideas.
“Things that they were cussing PNP for proposing in the last election, they are now on the quiet announcing it as if it is their idea. At a minimum it is intellectual dishonesty,” he said.
Opposition Leader Mark Golding and Opposition Senator Damion Crawford had also criticised the Government for not crediting the PNP.
However, Holness said he found it very “curious” that there would be an attempt to claim credit.
“I just want it to be clear [that] there are very few things that are new under the sun. The brain is not all in one head meaning that it is the collective wisdom through which ideas are generated,” he said while addressing the handing over of a house under the social housing programme in Schoolfield (south of Santa Cruz) in St Elizabeth on Friday.
He pointed to a study done by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute in 2016 which outlined what the Government needs to do to increase access to housing.
“… Which includes looking at rent-to-own and rental facilities and rental solutions. We incorporated those in our strategy. We did not make it a manifesto commitment of such,” he said.
A similar idea was pitched by the PNP in its 2020 election manifesto.
Holness added that over time as the Government looks at its resources, it will allow for other ideas to come to fruition.
“I don’t believe that there should be any contention over whose idea it was. Clearly, we don’t plagiarise, so if an original thought was expressed then I would be the first to attribute the origin. But it was not an original thought,” he chuckled.
“Indeed it was something that we have always contemplated and in the formation of the social housing programme, which predated the 2020 election when such a point was made, it was always the intention to roll out these solutions. We are getting closer to doing it now,” he added.
He said the Government is working on three housing modalities, while working on others.
“So if the political opposition wants to join us that’s fine, if they want to claim paternity that’s fine. What is important is who is getting the job done,” he said.
“So there are a lot of people talking, making promises, but what you have to think about [is] who gets the job done,” he added.
He said the focus should be on the delivering of houses.
“Some people will come to you with sweet mouth. Some people will come to you with goat mouth. Some people will come and talk all kind of things, right, but what you have to do is to figure out who will come and deliver the house,” he said.
He said public-private partnerships are being developed for the housing sector.
“The next time you see me I will be able to announce some public-private partnerships in this area, which will increase the number of housing units that we will be able to provide in terms of the social housing component,” he said.
