Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Friday used the ground-breaking ceremony for a new housing development at Rasta City in Tivoli Gardens, downtown Kingston, to decry unnecessary bureaucracy and other hurdles which he blamed for depriving many Jamaicans of home ownership.

The new housing project, which Holness said was in the making from as far back as 2007, will consist of 144 units on 8.3 acres of land. The project, named Royal Estates Tivoli Gardens, is being executed by the National Housing Trust (NHT) and the estimated cost is $2.8 billion. Construction is expected to take two years.

Using the project as an example, Holness said Rasta City is just one of many communities being deprived of development due to people playing politics or dragging their feet and being negligent.

“Rasta City is not the only community waiting for so long. I toured this area in December 2019, which was four years ago. At that time, Shakira Dockery said for many years they had been told there would be some form of housing development and they haven’t seen anything happen. Another resident said the living conditions of citizens are unbelievable, and over the past few weeks, during increased rainfall, his roof leaked and that he would want the prime minister to come through with the housing plan,” Holness said.

“Funds were allocated to do it, and it should have been done under the auspices of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC). However, [the] Administration changed and it didn’t get done. It fell off the books. Administration changed again, commitments were made again under the UDC, but it didn’t get done. Administration changed again and we made a commitment to do it. This time we said it’s not the UDC’s task to build these houses and we are going to put it through to the Ministry of Housing in collaboration with the NHT,” the prime minister said.

“Then, because of the size of the project, it had to go through the usual processes that can take several months. It then had to go through what is called public investment to ensure that the right decisions are being made and the project is feasible before we can spend public resources. Then it has to go through procurement. In other words, who is going to build this. We have to ensure the project is fair and transparent. If one thing goes wrong in the process and we become open to any legal challenge, the advice that we usually get is to abort it and start again. This project suffered from that,” Holness said.

Lamenting the unnecessary bureaucracy, Holness said, “That explains why people lose faith in government, why they become cynical of government. Sometimes as bureaucrats and administrators, we believe that the longer a process takes, the better it is. It is a culture in the Jamaican bureaucracy that we must eliminate. It should not take us four years to break ground for the project,” he said.

Friday was not the first time that Holness was speaking out against bureaucracy. In 2018 at a ground-breaking ceremony for 230 housing units in St Andrew South Western, he said that removing the existing bureaucratic culture will help to fast-track several projects and grow the economy.

Holness again addressed the issue in 2019, at which time he lamented that since he took over the helm of Government, much of his time had been absorbed in attempting to resolve the inherited legacy of bureaucracy which was impeding economic growth.

Linval Freeman, chairman of the NHT, in his opening remarks at the ground-breaking ceremony on Friday, described the project as a community rebirth in Tivoli.

“This will be a place to build opportunities that will positively shape our nation,” Freeman said.

Desmond McKenzie, Member of Parliament for Kingston Western, which includes Tivoli, said that the community is grateful for the project but he warned and implored the people to remember that the units will not be given away freely.

He said that people who are not already contributors to the NHT have started to regularise in order to get in line with the requirements for the houses.