Dear Editor,

I had difficulty deciding whether to laugh or cry on hearing the prime minister, in defending the revived inner-city housing programme — under which numerous non-contributors will get houses compliments of many poor contributors who pay into the fund, but will never be able to qualify for a loan — claiming that if the inner-city recipients do not pay the mortgages, their houses will go up for auction like any other mortgagee in the country.

Did the prime minister, who has represented a garrison constituency all her political life, really say that with a straight face? Could it be that the prime minister has become so far removed from the Jamaica that she leads that she is no longer aware of the realities of the garrison life?

Would the prime minister tell us who in their right mind would ever dare try to go into a garrison to live in a house that they bought at auction, assuming that anyone could even go in to put up the notice signs? Does the prime minister really believe that even another garrison resident would dare try to move into a repossessed unit?

As I listened with an open mouth to the prime minister’s defence of the programme, I could not help but recall the desperation with which a mechanic who I knew approached me sometime ago. He lived in a garrison community and had managed to get a government house, for which he paid a small mortgage. When his mom got ill in St Thomas, he went to the country for about three months to stay with her. When he returned, his belongings had been packed away to the back of the house for which he had been paying for years, and other persons were living in his home. He was told that he had a house in the county and it was other people’s turn now to live in the house!

When I suggested that I would go to the police with him to deal with the matter, you can guess the response.

The reality of garrison life is that the vast majority are decent people, but they live under the gun and are modern-day slaves as the concept of free will in most of those areas is nothing but a dream. So don’t tell me that people can go into a garrison community and buy a repossessed unit and live happily every after in a home which has been sold for non-payment of mortgage!

Political representatives of garrison communities have a responsibility to liberate those who live under tyranny in these areas, but they pretend they do not know the enforcers and have nothing to do with them.

You know what is sickening about Jamaica, too? We are reputed to have more churches per square mile than any other country in the world and a higher proportion of persons professing to be Christians than probably anywhere else, but most of these “upright” persons and people of high morals have chosen to ignore the sections of the Bible which speak to being our brother’s keeper. For, if Jamaica were really a Christian country, or if modern-day Christians were against slavery as were some of their counterparts centuries ago, they would have risen up with one accord long ago and united to demand from the political beneficiaries, the freedom of those thousands of Jamaicans who live under tyranny in the garrisons.

It was the late Martin Luther King who said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I wonder what he would say if he reincarnated in Jamaica today where we seem all too happy to remain silent about the wickedness that passes for normalcy and democracy in this country, with the tacit complicity of the huge religious sector?

Joan E Williams

Kingston 10, Jamaica

gratestj@gmail.com