Land Title Handover Ceremony In Clifton St Catherine
Keynote Address
By
The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At
Land Title Handover Ceremony – Clifton St Catherine
July 30, 2024
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Thank you very much, Madam Master of Ceremonies, for your masterful conduct of the ceremony so far.
Clifton is a special place for me. Clifton is an example, Member of Parliament Jackson, of the energy and enterprise of the Jamaican people. I am here today to support that energy and enterprise. Yes, I am prime minister of Jamaica, but I am also the minister of housing and I administer the housing portfolio directly. I spent a lot of time dealing with housing policy, all the issues regarding land settlement, development of communities, social housing, spend quite a bit of time with the private sector trying to ensure that the private sector is a powerful engine of growth and development in housing in Jamaica. I’m sure you will all agree that housing is expanding rapidly in Jamaica, particularly in the private housing market.
We have some developers with us here today and we have developed the Bernard Lodge master plan, which will facilitate the development of private housing. We have done quite a bit of work with the NHT to develop the mortgage market so that Jamaicans who are working who have income can acquire a house on the open market and that I believe is going fairly well. Still a lot of complaints that they can’t find a house. Not far from here we’re doing a housing development called Catherine Estates. Your member of parliament, my very good friend, Fitz Jackson, we opened that estate together. There were some, maybe two or 300 units ready to go to market, 26, 000 persons applied for them; that’s the extent of the demand for housing, but we’re not going to be able to produce that many houses all at once by the snap of a finger.
We have given ourselves a period of five years to put on the market 70,000 housing solutions. It won’t solve the overall demand. The overall demand is about 150,000 houses, but it’ll go a far away in satiating the demand. But what of people who live in communities like Clifton?
You know, this morning I thought of wearing a suit as I would normally do. I had no advance notice that my friend would have chosen to wear a piece from his African couture, his African collection. I too have an extensive African collection and so I decided that I would sport one of these shirts today because my friend, I had to deliver my Emancipation Day message and I thought it would have been appropriate to be attired in my African print. So, the essence of my message, and you will see it in a few days, was about the struggle of the enslaved people in Jamaica, our forefathers and in particular, the struggle of Sam Sharpe who led the Sam Sharpe Rebellion. And as I thought about what I would say to the people of Clifton, and as I conferred with your Member of Parliament, we both confirmed that the community of Clifton had its origins as far back as our sugar plantation and our slave history.
Many of the people who live here were part of the sugar plantation of Bernard Lodge. Many of them would be able to trace back through their parents and grandparents and their great grandparents that they worked on this sugar plantation and in the arrangements of the plantation economy, the people who worked on the plantation were sometimes allowed by the plantation master’s to live on the property, to maybe have a small plot of land where they could farm. However, they could not own anything, and they couldn’t own anything because the type of slavery that was practiced in the colonies here was called chattel slavery, meaning that people were considered property. Property can’t own property. And in fact, the people who worked on the plantations were never paid for their labour, so they weren’t able to acquire anything. That’s the legacy. That’s the history and as we celebrate the period of Emancipendence, we reflect on these things.
Coming from that history, we have had a legacy of informal settlement, so generations of Jamaicans have lived on sugar lands without anything to formally say you have ownership or you have rights to this. It is a constant struggle for Jamaicans because we came out of a system where we had no endowments, meaning that our families going back historically had no ownership of anything, and that has created a sense of social injustice in the society. Something that we are still reckoning with today.
Today, however, it is we who own Jamaica. We are the ones who own the government of Jamaica. And the government that you own, the government of Jamaica, must create a system whereby every Jamaican has an equal and orderly opportunity to own a piece of Jamaica and create an endowment for future generations. I see myself as part of this long struggle to empower the Jamaican people with the ability for orderly, formal and fair opportunity for ownership.
I don’t claim to be the originator of this thought. I recognize the work of the Most Honourable Portia Simpson Miller in this regard, in particular. Obviously, she saw the problem in the same way that I see the problem, in the same way that Fitz sees the problem, which is why she would have approved of letters of possession being given to you, which would be the start of this process of formalizing you on the land. So when I took over as prime minister in 2016, my entire focus was how can we accelerate this process of giving more Jamaicans the opportunity, the orderly and fair opportunity to own land and what we did, we looked at the entirety of this sugar plantation and we created a development area, the formal development of communities that people can through the market or through social housing get formal and fair access to land and also for those persons who are already occupying the land to formalize them and give them ownership of the land.
So as Fitz rightfully said, we are here not to throw stones at each other because we are all committed to the same cause and today is a day for us to celebrate. It is a happy day that the children of enslaved persons whose forebears struggled cutting cane for the profit of the plantation owner without any prospects of owning any property or accumulating any wealth190 years later since the end of that system. Today, you can say I own a piece of the estate that my forebears struggled on.
It is not simply a matter of having a title, which I am sure many of you are going to lock away somewhere. I know, you’re going to put it in a plastic bag. Some of you are going to tie it up and you’re going to hide it. You won’t even remember where it is after that. I know how it goes. It’s a very important piece of paper. However, the title is more than just your certificate of ownership. The title says that I have the ability to use this property to acquire and advance myself economically so I can use this to acquire more property, whether I want to borrow against it, whether I want to use it as an asset for something else, or if I want to convert it by selling it and buy something else; I have economic power by having this title.
So, I want you to see your title as economic empowerment. Yes, lock it away in your safe so nobody can take it and do anything with it but also now remember that this is giving you some economic power. But it would not be sufficient for me to come here and say how great it is for you to have a title when the truth is that the value of your property is severely limited by the way in which the community is developed. We have an obligation as a state to ensure that you can get the highest value out of your property so we, as I stand here today, commit to assisting and not just to assist, we have already started a process to see to the implementation of proper infrastructure for the residents of Clifton.
I commend you, those of you who have agreed to contribute $50,000. Well, everybody has agreed. Excellent. And I am told that I should thank Fitz. Congratulations Fitz, good leadership in the community. That contribution will go towards the infrastructure fund. In my last budget presentation, I announced that we will be allocating 15 billion dollars to deal with the regularization of certain inner-city communities that have been informally settled. We wouldn’t be able to spend 15 billion dollars in one year, so it’s a five-year programme and the Clifton will be one of those communities that will benefit from that allocation.
This entire area, Clifton and the adjoining communities which will emerge on the Bernard Lodge property, must all live as one Jamaica. Some communities will be established formally, so they will be structured, they will have water and sewage and security and all the amenities for convenient living, but we don’t like a situation where right beside that you have another community where there is no water, no sewage, and no convenience; that doesn’t say one Jamaica. And it shouldn’t matter that because some people have big job and income and others don’t, then those who don’t can’t enjoy the basics of decent human living. That’s not what we believe in and therefore in supporting the sentiments of your member of parliament, that as we develop this area, the infrastructure that is developed must also benefit the people of Clifton.
So, as you mentioned sewage, as the sewage is developed here, it should not be a challenge to have the community of Clifton connected. As we bring water in, it should not be a challenge for the people of Clifton to get water. I want to be clear on the water. We have a concept of social water, but water is not free. I don’t need to go any further MP. So, yes, there will be social water. There’s a certain level of consumption, which we consider social, but above that, we expect that persons will make their fair contribution.
The amenities such as where we are now, your football field, your play area and recreation area; all of those are things that we will be contributing to, but more importantly, as you get your titles, which have new boundaries, some of them, you must be prepared for the establishment of proper roadways for access. So, it may mean for some of you that you might have to step back with your fence a little bit or a make a little adjustment here or a little adjustment there, but please, I urge you to do that in a spirit of cooperation. Don’t get into any argument over where boundary is. Let us all maintain the community spirit and work together to build and uplift your community.
So, as I have said today, and your member of parliament has said, today is a day for us to celebrate. I’m truly happy to be here with you, both as a friend of the community and your member of parliament, as the minister of housing and as prime minister of Jamaica. I want to again wish for you all a happy Emancipendence period.
God bless you. Love you.