NHT Protecting Contributors’ Funds – PM

The National Housing Trust (NHT) is prudently managed, with strong internal mechanisms in place to protect the resources of its contributors, says Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness.

Speaking in Beckford Kraal, Clarendon, on Friday (February 2) where he handed over a two-bedroom house to a family under the New Social Housing Programme (NSHP), the Prime Minister assured that the NHT funds are handled with “great care”.

“I am certain that the board and management of the NHT take all precautions; they take every single measure to ensure that contributors’ funds are protected,” he said.

The Prime Minister noted that the “funds are from the contributors of Jamaica, who are making contributions for their own housing in the future, so they are not to be used in a way that does not protect their investments”.

As such, he said, “We have taken extra steps with the kind of board that we have put in at the NHT to make sure that [it] has strong financial, accounting and legal management skills. In terms of policy direction, we have been very clear to the management that they must take the strongest possible measure to protect contributors’ funds.”

Prime Minister Holness said even when the Trust makes contributions to social housing initiatives, like the NSHP, there are procedures to ensure that the resources go to the beneficiaries.

“We are grateful that the NHT has considered it (NSHP) a programme in which they can invest,” he said.

The NHT is entrusted with increasing and enhancing the stock of available housing in Jamaica, as well as providing financial assistance to the neediest of their contributors who wish to build, buy or to repair their homes.

The NSHP, which was conceptualised by Prime Minister Holness, is geared at improving the housing conditions of the country’s poor and disadvantaged through the provision of quality, affordable and sustainable housing.

It is being implemented through the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation.