Fran­cis Joseph

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards came to the de­fence of poor peo­ple dur­ing a re­cep­tion he host­ed at his of­fi­cial res­i­dence on Sat­ur­day night. Ad­dress­ing of­fi­cials of Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty, the Diplo­mat­ic Corps, and the most in­flu­en­tial busi­ness peo­ple in T&T, Richards point­ed out that one of the ma­jor chal­lenges fac­ing the na­tion was the se­ri­ous hous­ing deficit. Richards said one of the ma­jor chal­lenges fac­ing the na­tion was the se­ri­ous hous­ing deficit. The Pres­i­dent said Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty was seek­ing to pro­vide "de­cent hous­es in de­cent com­mu­ni­ties in which every per­son can ex­pe­ri­ence God's love and can live and grow in­to all that God in­tends."

Richards then asked the re­al mean­ing of the word "de­cent." He added:

"Make no mis­take; there are among us those who do not ful­ly un­der­stand the need to ap­pre­ci­ate the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man be­ing. "In shap­ing their thoughts re­gard­ing the less for­tu­nate, or, to put it plain­ly, poor peo­ple, they evince an at­ti­tude that sug­gests that the poor have no en­ti­tle­ment, and must, there­fore, be con­tent with what­ev­er is 'hand­ed out' to them. "If ever there is a wrong at­ti­tude in giv­ing, that is it. While it is true that many of us have worked hard to ac­quire the things and the po­si­tion in so­ci­ety that we have ac­quired, while oth­ers have not, we must be mind­ful, nev­er­the­less, of the fact that a num­ber of us have had what can on­ly be de­scribed as lucky breaks."

Richards called on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty and as­sist for the right mo­tive. He asked that the less for­tu­nate have a sense of worth and feel em­pow­ered to lift them­selves out of the very mod­est back­grounds, and in­to a bet­ter place in the so­cial or­der. Among those Richards was ad­dress­ing was J Ronald Ter­williger, in­ter­na­tion­al chair­man of Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty, who has pledged US $100 mil­lion of his for­tune to as­sist in this cam­paign for the next five years. Ter­williger, de­scribed as one of the wealth­i­est men in the US, told the guests that he was lucky to have ac­quired wealth through hous­ing in the US, and he want­ed to give some­thing back.

Say­ing this was his first vis­it to T&T, Ter­williger pledged to go in­to Haiti and Chile and as­sist in hous­ing for those af­fect­ed by the two re­cent earth­quakes. He said Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty was in Haiti for 26 years as­sist­ing that coun­try, and stressed that his or­gan­i­sa­tion was go­ing all out to as­sist. Chair­man of Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty T&T, Chanka Seeter­ram, said the lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion, cel­e­brat­ing its 13th an­niver­sary, had been con­struct­ing an av­er­age of 20 hous­es per year. He wants to step up that fig­ure by con­struct­ing 500 hous­es in the next five years. He al­so called on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to as­sist in this re­gard.