Four Major Church Groups Demanded a Prime Minister Come Clean on a Property Deal

• The Outameni property deal drew a censure threat and lawsuit warning
• Four church organisations issued a joint public statement
• They cited poor stewardship and a missing feasibility study
• Some NHT board members resigned as the pressure mounted

The Jamaica Council of Churches, the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance, the Jamaica Association of Full Gospel Churches, and the Independent Churches of Jamaica issued a joint public statement demanding Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller come clean on a controversial National Housing Trust transaction involving property tied to the Trelawny-based Outameni Experience attraction, joining an Opposition that had threatened a censure motion and warned it had not ruled out a lawsuit.

The churches framed their intervention explicitly around stewardship rather than partisan politics. It has, among other things, revealed the poor stewardship of the resources of our people, both in the exorbitant price paid for such an investment and the lack of a feasibility study that would minimise the risk to the country, the church leaders said in their joint statement, a specific critique targeting both the price paid and the absence of basic due diligence before the NHT committed contributors’ funds.

The church coalition welcomed the resignation of some NHT board members as a positive early response to the pressure, but was explicit that it did not consider the matter resolved. As an expression of our commitment to good governance marked by integrity, they said, the churches were not convinced the full truth of the matter had yet been shared with the Jamaican people, a direct rebuke of Simpson Miller’s own account during a prior sitting of the House of Representatives.

Four denominationally diverse church organisations coordinating a single public demand for financial transparency from a sitting prime minister is a genuinely unusual intervention in Jamaican governance, distinct from the individual pastoral commentary this publication has documented on other property and financial matters, evidence that a housing-fund scandal serious enough could draw organised, cross-denominational church pressure rather than remaining a purely political dispute between government and opposition.

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