If, like me, you have followed the big polemic initiated by Minister of Housing Showkutally Soodhun about the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) ‘scandal’, you will have allowed your anger with your compatriots to build up day by day. Like a self-appointed righter of wrongs, Soodhun came out all guns blazing against those who ‘stole’ houses meant for the poor and left them out in the cold. In the background lurked a view of Mauritius full of unscrupulous, heartless thieves. There are some minors who own these houses meant for the poor, Soodhun blurted out with a smug look on his face, following that with the usual crowd-pleasing sound bites that politicians throw out when they want to look tough.

In an atmosphere where virtually every day a press conference is organised or information is leaked to denounce a new ‘scandal’ (next is the Mauritius Shipping Corporation and the Sugar Investment Trust) deliberately giving targeted tidbits of information, a wave of paranoia has swept through the land. Almost everyone you know is a crook – unless of course they are close to power, in which case they are, de facto, squeaky clean. I personally stopped inviting friends for coffee in case they walk away with my cups. I no longer greet my relatives in case the corruption on their cheeks rubs off on mine. I stopped accepting cakes from my neighbours lest the ingredients were paid for with tainted money.

After investigating, this is what is left of the NHDC ‘scandal’. To begin with, not all the NHDC houses are built for the poor. The first category is built for middle to high-income earners, housing units are on the pricy side and can be bought by anyone – anyone! – who does not own a first home. Secondly, there is no law preventing any middle/high-income earner, or even a tycoon for that matter, from buying a house and even having it registered in their babies’ names if they so wish, provided that they do not own a house themselves.

In fact, it is with the profit made from these houses that the NHDC builds social housing for the underprivileged, through a process called cross-subsidisation. And it is for this second category of housing that there are criteria specifying the salary limit and conditions which entitle one to acquire a house there. (For detailed information on this issue, please read our NHDC dossier this week).

The problem is that when Soodhun talks about wealthy people who bought NHDC houses, he is too smart – or politically devious? – to specify the category he is talking about. So you are left with a picture of your compatriots being mired in daylight robbery of the POOR.

Naturally, we know that whenever the government undertakes something, it is those who are politically-connected who benefit first. So some may have gamed the system as others did in 2004 – deplorable enough we concede – but they certainly did not rob the poor as the picture being drawn suggests.

So perhaps instead of tilting at windmills, our self-appointed and newly-minted Robin Hoods should start giving us the whole truth. As citizens we deserve nothing less.