The Editor, Sir:

The recent revelation by the head of the National Housing Trust that the mortgage institution is set to record a deficit for the financial year 2007-2008 is not at all surprising. It is merely a reflection of what happens when an organisation, mandated to carry out a specific function, is pressured by vote-seeking politicians to detour from its core business and finance unviable projects.

The two projects that were subsidised by the National Housing Trust - the inner-city housing project and the sugar workers' housing project - were no doubt a vote-seeking attempt by the previous Government, which has now left the mortgage institution with a half billion-dollar deficit. In the case of the inner-city project, the Housing Trust had to provide housing solutions to persons, some of whom have never contributed to the trust. The institution also funded training programmes to provide those beneficiaries with a skill so that they could earn an income to pay their mortgage.

Taxpayers' burden

Question is, how many of these persons having received a benefit from the National Housing Trust without contributing are actually making their mortgage payments?

Similar situations exist all over this country, where taxpaying Jamaicans have been made to pay for the unscrupulous behaviour of others (e.g. consumers made to pay for the cost of illegal connections to some utility companies).

Measures to be implemented by the National Housing Trust to deal with the deficit will include an adjustment to the interest rate, or worse, a redundancy exercise, which unfortunately will be blamed on the present government. However, I hope that good sense will prevail and that well-thinking Jamaicans will see this as a necessary evil.

The imprudence of the previous administration has to be corrected.

I am, etc.,

ALDRANE GENIUS

aeg40@hotmail.com