JAMAICA | Command RejectsWholesale Relocation Of Cooper's Pen

           COMAND REJECTS WHOLESALE RELOCATION OF COOPER’S PEN

COMAND strongly objects to the position announced by the Holness Government that land has been identified to relocate residents of Cooper’s Pen. The identification of another site must not become a substitute for first determining whether Cooper’s Pen can be regularised, replanned and upgraded in place.

Relocation should not be treated as the default solution simply because a community developed informally.

Our objection is not to planning, lawful development or legitimate public purposes. Nor do we argue that every household must remain exactly where it now stands. Our objection is to wholesale relocation where practical alternatives may exist.

Public policy should begin with avoidance of displacement, then minimise it where it cannot be avoided, and relocate only those households for whom movement is genuinely necessary.

COMAND has supported Minister Edmund Bartlett’s approach of integrating communities such as Barrett Town into the tourism development process, allowing local people to become part of the tourism product and its economic opportunities.

That same principle should apply at Cooper’s Pen. Development should integrate communities, not automatically uproot them.

The Prime Minister’s announcement therefore raises the wrong first question. The issue should not begin with, “Where can the people be moved?” It should begin with, “What portion of Cooper’s Pen can be lawfully regularised and upgraded, and what limited relocation, if any, is actually necessary?”

COMAND’s position is rooted in a broader concern about institutional inequity in the ownership, control and distribution of land. While the claim of reparative justice is legitimate, our argument does not depend upon it.

Jamaica requires a serious programme of land reform that opens access not only to residential lots, but also to land for shops, workshops, farming, tourism enterprises, light manufacturing and other productive activity. Land must become an instrument of economic participation, not merely a place to sleep.

Squatting is among the most inefficient and costly methods of community formation because settlement occurs first and planning follows afterwards. Government must then retrofit roads, drainage, sanitation, water, electricity, schools, recreational space and commercial areas.

But the persistence of squatting is also evidence that the formal land market and public land-distribution system are failing to provide a realistic pathway for a large section of working Jamaicans.

“The answer to an inefficient form of settlement cannot be an equally inefficient policy of uprooting whole communities where regularisation is practical.”

The Inter-American Development Bank’s involuntary resettlement framework provides an important policy benchmark. Its starting point is avoidance: displacement should be avoided or minimised wherever feasible.

Where relocation cannot reasonably be avoided, affected people should not be left poorer, more insecure or worse off than before. Their housing, tenure security, livelihoods, access to services and overall living conditions should be restored and, where possible, improved.

Applied to Cooper’s Pen, this means that in-situ regularisation and upgrading must be examined before wholesale relocation. Where residents have already invested their own resources in shelter and established social and economic ties, the state should first consider orderly subdivision, roads, drainage, water, sanitation, secure tenure, development controls, public open space and provision for commercial activity.

There may be households located in environmentally unsafe areas, critical infrastructure corridors or places genuinely required for an overriding public purpose. In those cases, targeted relocation may be necessary. But targeted relocation is fundamentally different from uprooting an entire community.

COMAND’S POLICY TEST

• Avoid displacement first. Examine credible alternatives before any decision to remove residents.
• Minimise displacement where avoidance is impossible. Move only those households for which relocation is demonstrably necessary.
• Regularise and upgrade where feasible. Convert informal occupation into planned development with secure tenure and infrastructure.
• Protect livelihoods as well as housing. Relocation must preserve access to work, transport, schools, community networks and economic opportunity.
• Leave affected households better and more secure. No family should emerge from a state-led relocation process with diminished tenure, higher vulnerability or reduced opportunity.

COMAND therefore calls on the Holness Government to suspend any presumption of wholesale relocation and undertake a transparent in-situ regularisation assessment for Cooper’s Pen. Where technical, environmental and legal conditions permit, residents should be regularised and the community upgraded.

Where specific households must be relocated, the process must be negotiated, targeted and consistent with the principle that affected people should emerge with greater tenure security, improved services and no loss of livelihood or opportunity.

If the Government is serious about ending squatting, it must create a credible pathway into the formal land system: serviced lots, affordable long-term leases, incremental ownership, cooperative development, regularisation of suitable settlements and access to land for enterprise as well as housing.

The objective should be to transform Cooper’s Pen into a planned, secure and economically productive community, not simply move the problem from one parcel of land to another.

O. Dave Allen
Executive Chairman

Community Organizations for Management & Sustainable Development (COMAND)

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