HAJ Handing Over of Titles to Residents in Westmoreland
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
at the
HAJ Handing Over of Titles to Residents,
Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland
On
July 18, 2025
——————————————————————————————
Thank you everyone.
I want to thank Doreen for playing the role of Master of Ceremony. Of course, you know that Doreen Prendergast is the Managing Director of the Housing Agency of Jamaica; and you also prayed. Yes, you seem to be very active in your church. I could tell. It was the sincerity in the prayers, and I’m sure all of you would’ve heard it. She’s well practiced in interceding on our behalf. Thank you very much, Doreen.
May I also acknowledge your Members of Parliament: Daniel, George and Morland. I am happy to be in your parish gentlemen, and to be amongst your constituents.
His Worship the Mayor Councillor Danree Delancy
Mr Norman Brown, Chairman of the Housing Agency of Jamaica,
And Ms Simone Miller. I haven’t met Simone as yet. Simone is representing the beneficiaries and the most important people in the room, the members of the Llandilo, Seaton Crescent, Whitehall, White House, Galloway, and Bethel Town.
Representatives of the media,
Members of the security forces who are here. And before I go on, let me give special commendation to the security forces. They’re doing an amazing job in Westmoreland in bringing down the crime. I’m sure everybody would agree.
Today is a day of immense pride. We are here to advance a vision of broad-based land and home ownership in Jamaica. Eighty-six of you from the communities I’ve just named, namely White House, Whitehall, Llandilo, Seaton Crescent, Galloway and Hermitage in Bethel Town, will walk away from this ceremony with a document that has eluded you and many others for far too long, a certificate of title, big document.
And with that piece of paper, you will walk literally into a new life, and you will walk with your head high. You will walk with confidence. Nobody can come and tell you to move from here. And you know us Jamaicans, we are very proud. So now the lands that you have occupied, and which in your hearts of heart, you know it’s your own, now you have a legal right and the privileges that come with that.
The policy of any government, and certainly the government that I administer on your behalf, is to make sure that every Jamaican can have a title to a piece of Jamaica; that’s the aspiration they call it. That’s the ambition, that’s the hope. I know in the hearts of everyone here, that is something you would want to achieve as well.
The road to a title, however, is not easy. Not easy at all. First of all, you have to identify the little piece of land. And to identify that little piece of land, it’s very difficult, but when you do, you have to be able to buy it. Some of us can’t buy it, don’t have the resources, the wherewithal, and so some of us have been encouraged, directed, guided to go and occupy informally. It is the case. It is a part of the Jamaican reality. And indeed, in some ways… Well, in many ways, I’m being euphemistic, the government has been complicit in the informal and irregular settlement of land in Jamaica and the excuse is that the process is so difficult, where are the people going to live, how are they going to survive, just go and occupy the land.
And a lot of government policies have been over the decades crafted on this basis that the general good of getting people to occupy the land outweighs any challenges that may occur because of informality. So that’s the thought behind many politicians, and I’m speaking guardedly because I know it’s the season that all kinds of things can be twisted but as your Prime Minister, and I’m reasoning with you, there are issues in our society that we have to deal with because we have to exercise them from our culture.
Many politicians before me, and I’m certainly not in that category, I am all for the formal and legal settlement of land and I want to make that process as easy and seamless as possible, but before me and my government, there would have been politicians- and I know as I’m reading the faces here, you know what I’m saying and though you may fear to nod, you are nodding in your mind, would have said to you, see the piece of cane piece, nobody is using it, you go on and go put up your thing there, later on i will sort it out.
I know from this parish because I have many letters from persons from this parish asking me, Prime Minister, I just sort out this, sort out that, putting in writing who told them to go and occupy the land. I see people laughing here because you know what I’m saying. In other words, I’m saying I can understand why politicians would do it because they are weighing that the greater good is to get people to occupy and then they deal with the challenges that come with it afterwards. The problem is the challenges come on very rapidly, but nobody really deals with them afterwards. Where do the challenges come from?
They go and occupy the land and 10 years after I might be going through and somebody stop me and say, Prime Minister, I am living here for 20 or 30 years with no water. Well, it was never planned with a water supply scheme in mind. You see the road? The road was never fixed yet. Well, they may have scribed out some roads, but it wasn’t planned. There was no garbage collection route planned and so when I go into these communities, I don’t really want to say it was informal, it wasn’t on the plans, the government couldn’t budget for it. Sometimes the government don’t even know that a community is there.
However, the community is there. I am the Prime Minister. You elect me to deal with it, and I am dealing with it, but we must not forget how the problem happened because in this current season, the conversation doesn’t look at why things happen and how and who is responsible. The conversation is as if the world started in 2016. So, in other words, the persons who are competing for power must not take accountability for what happened in the past. My job is to say to you, I’m going to deal with your problem, but I would like you to know that I did not cause it. I did not encourage it. I didn’t create the problem, but I am still responsible for fixing it. I didn’t cause the fire, but I am there now. I have to go and out it. It’s the reality and so you have to judge me on how it is done but I also have to say to you, you need to appreciate how the problem started so that you don’t allow it to happen again.
So, with that context, many of these communities here were started under a programme called Operation Pride. I think that the ambition of the programme was good. I think the aspiration the programme expressed was good, but I don’t think it was a workable programme in how it was executed. And I have a difference in how I believe land settlement should be done. I believe that Jamaica is at a stage where we should not seek to do development incrementally.
Maybe 30 years ago, you could do incremental development to ease the problem, meaning you could say, alright, go and occupy the land and then we will come with the road, and we come with the water afterwards. But I think at this stage, seeing how incremental development has worked, that you really never get the road, you really never get the water, and it creates more problems than ever, particularly social problems. I think right now when we are going to settle people, settle them fully and then allow them to pay for it over time, that is the approach of the government.
And as I said to another event, and I’ll say to this crowd, and I ask you to think about it, you name me one informally settled community that has originated under my watch as your Prime Minister. Think about it. Tell me one informal settlement that has sprung up, endorsed and supported tacitly by my administration. Isn’t that a change in Jamaica? Isn’t that a significant change in our country? Think about it. And that is because I do not believe in chaka chaka development.
So they quarrel with me when I say I cannot allow an expansion of informality into Bernard Lodge, draw a line under it. I know it’s a sensitive subject, but if we’re going to move forward, let’s move forward in other discipline, fairness and equity. Somebody has to draw the line. It wasn’t popular, but we can stand here today and say we are well on our way on stopping informality but here we are also promoting ownership because that’s what you want. Every person who is informally settling don’t like the fact that they don’t have a certificate of title or something that give them right to the land.
These communities that I named, several of them would’ve been established through some initiation of Operation Pride. Persons would’ve been given access to land and that would be some 20 years or more, but up to today, they don’t have titles. Some of the communities, the infrastructure is not fully in place. However, the HAJ, the government’s entity agency to promote the regularization and formalization of communities has been investing in developing these communities. We spend billions of dollars each year trying to regularize many of these informal settlements but the truth is there are so many informal settlements that it would require a massive budget to be able to address all the issues for all of these communities all at once but we do as much of it as we can, and as our economy grows, we put more resources into it.
Don’t just pass over this statement; as our economy grows, we put more resources into it, because the fundamental issue here, my friends in Westmoreland, is that you cannot provide the services for the people unless you build a strong, robust, and growing economy. Make no mistake about it. And the only government that has provided the citizens of this country with a stable, robust, resilient, and growing economy is the Andrew Holness led administration, this government that I administer on your behalf. They can say all kind of things, but they cannot contest this fact; incontestable.
The HAJ has been tasked with doing the upgrades. Today, we are handing over titles because for the people who are benefiting, it’s over 7,000 titles and I’m going to say some things about that. We could make 7,000 families titled, but some of you owe some money, that’s problem number one. Problem number two, some of the lands are not settled in terms of the surveying. Some of the lands have been surveyed, but since they have been surveyed, other people moved on and so we have to go back and resurvey because now you want road access so we may have to move a fence here or shift something there so there is always some work to do to bring the land up to a state where it can be titled.
Let’s talk about those titles where money is the problem. Some is big money, I’m not going to say that, so we’ll talk about the big money ones, but some titles are for small funds: $50,000, $100,000, $150,000. And I don’t know if you have that figure Doreen, as to how many titles have a balance of $150,000. They were sold for $60,000 maybe 10/ 20 years ago or more. Here is what we’re going to do, and I have told the chairman so listen carefully; it’s part of our manifesto.
I have said to the chairman, examine your database for all the titles that are under $150,000 outstanding and we are going to give an amnesty so that will give a significant number of Jamaicans access to their titles. And I also use this platform to say to others who owe over the $150,000; come in and start paying. Let us settle this and get all the titles out there into your hands because the title gives you access to financing. Once you have the title, you can go to your bank and get a loan and start a business. It helps, but it gives you the security. So that’s one thing we’re going to do to support our ambitious Jamaicans, our deserving Jamaicans, who want to have their title.
But while I have your attention, if you allow me for a few more minutes just to point out that there’s a lot of talk about land ownership and access to land, a very sensitive subject because it has its roots in the dispossession of our people coming as far back as the plantation colonial era. But if we’re going to build our society, we have to build a society based on rules and fairness, and we want every Jamaican to be able to get access to land in a rules-based and fair system because we have seen what happens when the access is given without any rules.
I’m a politician so I know them very well. There’s an exigency and an urgency when it comes on to elections to say we are going to do this and that, but they don’t oftentimes sit down and think out everything. So, they have good intentions, but they don’t oftentimes sit down and think out everything that they’re doing but you will notice with me, that I’m very deliberate. I choose every word very carefully, and anything I say to you is because I thought about it, and more than thought about it, I wrote it down and I researched it myself, and I have very good advisors.
We can solve the land access issues in Jamaica, but to do that you must first solve the infrastructure problem. You will find that when you put in the infrastructure, first of all, when you cut the road, you put in the water and you put in the light; you will find that the people occupy the land in a much better way and you would also find that people are more willing to invest in the land and a mortgage market will develop because the land becomes saleable and therefore that allows you to purchase the land with a small deposit and pay for it over time. That’s how every developed country; every developed economy works.
So even people in the lowest income bracket are able to get a piece of land that suits them because the government absorbs the infrastructure cost and creates a market on which land is available. And governments can also say this piece of land is for persons who are in this income bracket and the price is this, come by land. There are a lot of things that government can do, but you have to first of all make the land marketable by putting in the infrastructure and so that has been our policy.
When you see we build a brand-new highway going east, going around to Portland, when you see we are building the highway going around Montego Bay and coming into Westmoreland through the Long Hill, what do you think is going to happen there? A lot of land is going to all of a sudden become open; that’s the strategy, that’s the thinking.
We also recognize that the process of getting titling is difficult because the land issue is not just for persons who are looking to buy land. The land issue is also a person who have land, but no title. And a lot of you inside here has land, almost everybody in here has family land or you’re living on land that has been in your family for generations but no title. You say, “It’s about five acres, where’s the boundary- that big tree down by the river then that rock and you define it.”
Now, what we have done, we have put in a new way of titling where we’ve put in an adjudication council, and it is called a systematic registration of land. It was done under my administration. It is an innovation in titling. Between April 1, 2021, and June 30, 2025, we have issued over 12,240 new titles under this system of systematic title. So, you hear a lot of talk about they’re going to do it, we do it already and already in operation.
We have declared certain areas for systematic titling. If you talk to the people in St Elizabeth and some other parishes in St Catherine, you will see that they’re being titled. We’re going to expand the system now to take in areas like these, so people who are already occupying land can be a part of the systematic registration so you will get your title.
And the good thing with this is that we pay for the land surveyor and the other fees and over time you can pay back for that so you can get your titles. I just wanted to put that out there because I see all kind of promises being made and you may not know that that promise doesn’t need to be made because we have done it already it. I hope that by virtue of this presentation, you have been edified, elucidated, informed, and that you now have a better understanding as to why you should continue to choose Jamaica.
God bless you and thank you.