The National Housing Trust board approved spending $62.5 million to buy property in St Mary in 2003 from PDK Limited, a company in which then senior government minister Dr Paul Robertson was listed as the major shareholder, according to a Sunday Gleaner investigation. The board approved the purchase before an environmental impact assessment had been completed and despite warnings from its own technical team.
More than a decade later, the property remains without a defined use, and people have begun squatting on land the Trust paid contributor funds to acquire. The Gleaner’s follow-up reporting found the same pattern repeated across other NHT land purchases: the Auditor General reported that the Trust had failed to realise any return on three major projects over five to ten years, projects that cost taxpayers more than $2 billion combined.
The arithmetic behind the criticism is straightforward. Only about 30 percent of NHT contributors ever receive a housing benefit from the Trust, a compulsory payroll deduction that functions like a tax for the majority who never draw a loan or scheme unit. A $62.5 million purchase that sits idle for over a decade, then attracts squatters rather than housing anyone, is exactly the kind of outcome that fuels the recurring question of who NHT land deals are actually meant to serve.
None of this makes every NHT land acquisition suspect. It does mean that a fund built on mandatory contributions from ordinary workers carries a higher bar for transparency than an ordinary commercial land purchase, a bar this particular deal, bought from a sitting minister’s own company, never should have been allowed to slip under.
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