People’s National Party (PNP) leader Mark Golding has promised 50,000 houses over a five-year period if the opposition is voted into power during the next general election.

At an engaging forum with persons living with special needs at The Summit in New Kingston on Thursday (August 7), the opposition leader unveiled a plan to construct 500 affordable housing units in all 63 constituencies island-wide.

Jamaica is now on watch for the Election Day announcement, which is expected to be tomorrow (August 9) during the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) rally to take place in Half-Way Tree.

While responding to the question ‘How will the PNP ensure that five per cent NHT allocation for accessible housing is not only maintained but expand in the future?’ at the forum on Thursday, Golding said, “The first thing we have to do, is actually build some affordable housing that the people can afford to buy.”

“Cause what has been happening in recent years, is that most of the houses that are being built in the country, are really for people who already have resources and are fairly well off, but for the ordinary Jamaican people, and especially persons from the community of disabilities where the high levels of unemployment and so on, those houses that are being built now are out of reach for them,” Golding said.

He added, “Right across Jamaica, our plan is to do at least 500 affordable houses in every constituency in the country”, which the audience, which mainly comprised of persons living with special needs and disabilities, cheered about.

He then said Senator Floyd Morris, who was first appointed to the Senate in 1998, would expound more in his presentation on the plan to build the 50,000 affordable houses in five years, before stating that the persons living with disabilities will have to be kept in mind to benefit from.

“In the design of those houses, and in the allocation of those houses, the community of persons with disabilities has to be very much in mind, so that we don’t make the mistake of excluding them from their ability to participate in those houses,” Golding explained.

“We also would like to see new NHT developments and other housing developments that are funded by the government really take on board design features that make them more accessible for persons with disabilities,” he said.

These facilities, he said, would include wider walkways and doorways, ramps and adaptable bathrooms and so persons living with disabilities can have environments conducive to living.

For his part, Senator Morris, deputy chairman of the PNP, acknowledged the utterances of Golding.

“My leader gave me the mandate to focus on housing and sustainable living. He said that you must come up with strategies for affordable housing,” Morris, who was a state minister in 2001 and president of the Senate in 2013, said.

“We are going to be building 50,000 houses across this country, and persons with disabilities will be benefiting from those 50,000 houses. The leader has also pointed [to] the fact that every constituency will be getting a minimum of 500 houses, because we’re going to distribute the houses across the country equitably. People want to live in the spaces that they grow; they are born and grow, and we’re going to make sure that these houses are built and spread across the country equitably,” he said. Morris then declared that the PNP will ensure future amenities around to-be-built communities are accessible for persons with disabilities, such as wheelchair-friendly sidewalks.