I am hoping BLA gets its house in order quickly

Tue Aug 13, 2013

Editor: Twenty-one years ago I took the plunge and built my castle with a loan from the Building and Loan Association. For just under 20 years, I made the ultimate sacrifice, ensuring that my mortgage was paid promptly every month. I can now proudly say that I don’t owe any lending institution for my home.{{more}}

I’m sure you’re saying everything sounds great and that I’m quite ecstatic about my achievement. However, I must inform you that, on the contrary, I’m very unhappy. Apparently while I was working one job during the week and another on weekends to ensure that my mortgage was always paid on time, some people were allowed to let their mortgages slide for several years. At first I thought that this would not affect me, but allow me to explain the problem with which I am now being faced.

When I built my property, shingle roofs were the order of the day, so I went with the tide, disregarding my contractor’s advice. I never did any house repairs for all those years, not even a paint job. The present situation is that the entire property needs to be refurbished. The major expenditure would be a change of roof to one using galvanize and most of the groove plywood and rafters have to be replaced.

I approached the Building and Loan Association, where I have a fixed deposit, for half of my own money to do these repairs to my property. They basically told me that they cannot give me any of my money that I entrusted them to hold for me. It appears that only critical health matters would be entertained. I have to contend with a roof leaking in several places, it seems, for an eternity. I have a combination of pots, pans, pails, buckets and drums all over my house in strategic locations for every time it rains and it’s driving me crazy. A few nights ago there was a very heavy and prolonged shower and the rain falling on the pots and pans appeared to be beating out a local soca, “Hurricane” by Skinny Fabulous. An idea struck me. The weather experts indicated that this hurricane season should be an above average one, so the probability exists that we can get a hurricane hitting St Vincent and the Grenadines. Well, since Building and Loan is refusing to give me half of my own money to do repairs to my property, I might get lucky and we get a category five hurricane to literally “tear the roof off this sucker”. My fight will then be with my insurance company.

With my luck, I will most likely have problems with the insurance company as well. If that happens then, the mood I’m in right now, I will get two truck loads of bay sand and put it inside the house and turn it into a beach. After all, someone once said that life’s a beach.

Let me take this opportunity to thank the board of directors and the management of the Building and Loan Association for their astute management of the organization over the years. A fine mess you have me in. As to the Financial Services Authority, let me commend you for the iron fist now placed on the Association. Management with a heart I call it. I hope you have the heart to visit me in the poor home or the mental home, whichever comes first, because I will definitely end up in one of the two places when you’re finished with me. Guess now I know why those two institutions are physically located close to each other.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this letter, possibly from one of the institutions in Glen.

C.S