‘I never expect a house like this’

PORT MARIA, St Mary:

Norma ‘Peaches’ Folkes was overcome with emotions last Friday after the St Mary native was handed the keys to her new home by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

Folkes cried openly as she thanked all parties who worked so that she could receive the two-bedroom house during a handover ceremony in Port Maria, nearly a year after her previous home was ravaged by flood rains in February 2022.

“Oh, God! What a great God! Thanks and praise to all the workers who build the house. I thank all of you. I give thanks in Jesus’ name,” she said.

The ceremony was also attended by Local Government and Rural Development Minister Desmond McKenzie, St Mary Western Member of Parliament Robert Montague, St Mary Central Member of Parliament Dr Morais Guy, Port Maria Mayor Richard Creary, Port Maria Councillor Germaine Smiley, workmen, and residents of the community.

In an earlier address, Holness said that the Government is taking steps to ensure that those in dire need are provided with houses.

“There are two programmes of the Government to treat with issues of social housing. One programme is the New Social Housing Programme, [under] which you see me, almost every week, presenting to beneficiaries new housing solutions constructed for them,” the prime minister said.

“And then there is the Indigent Housing Programme, which is part of the responsibility of the Ministry of Local Government to assist persons who have been established as poor and who have had some form of disaster, or impacted by some event, in their life – such as, for example, a flooding or a fire, or a landslide, or the collapse of their house – and they are not in a position to recover or respond positively to those kinds of disaster events,” he added.

Holness said that the local government ministry is aiming to assist in just under 100 cases annually.

“You would have seen the condition under which Peaches would’ve had to live as a result of the impact of the flooding. This housing programme that you’re seeing here, this lovely facility, is under the auspices of the Ministry of Local Government under the Indigent Housing Programme,” he explained.

The prime minister said that while there is always a challenge to provide assistance to all those who have been dislocated or have had their homes affected during flood rains and during the hurricane season, every effort is made to ensure that in every parish there is the ability to respond to such needs.

“We try to ensure that the person is genuinely poor. The unit here is a two-bedroom unit and it has come in at approximately $9 million. It’s a little bit more than what we do under the [New] Social Housing Programme. We’ve managed to bring down our cost significantly, but I can see why this unit is for $9 million because of where it is and how you have to build,” he said.

“I notice you have a cellar under the unit, so you have raised it, and so all of those things contribute to the cost. And so you would have had to use more steel in the decking of the floor. So it is quite justified – the expenditure. The house is quite dignified and I hold the view that not because someone is poor, they should get poor house,” Holness further noted.

Folkes and seven relatives, including her daughter, Carmen Francis, will occupy the new house.

Francis told The Gleaner on Friday that she is overjoyed.

“I never think say we would get a house like this,” she said. “Dem did promise we say we a go get a new house, but I had my doubts about that. But now my whole family will now be living in a new, two-bedroom, concrete house and we nah go get wet.”

Francis said that whenever it rained, their other house leaked badly.

“Mi really thank dem, and mi happy fi mi mother. She has been through a whole heap,” she concluded.

gareth.davis@gleanerjm.com