THE EDITOR, Sir:

A MEASURE of the power of the print media and The Gleaner in particular is that readers often accept as gospel things that are written without questioning their accuracy or the bias of the writer. Heather Robinson's political bias is well known but that is noexcuse for her wilful misrepresentations of facts.

In her column of February 25, she states that during my tenure as minister of construction only 11,000 houses were built.

The Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica reports that during the period 1981 to 1988 there was a total of 24,955 housing starts and 25,064 housing completions.

This data is easily accessible, especially to someone with parliamentary experience. Is it that she did not want to be confused by the facts or was she bent on bending the facts to suit her propaganda?

I will readily acknowledge that the rate of housing construction has increased since that time. Ms. Robinson has not bothered to disturb herself with the fact that a substantial portion of NHT funds, which should have financed housing construction, had to be kept on deposit to enable the country to meet the quarterly net domestic assets test imposed by the IMF.

The question for her is which government was it that forced the government into an IMF agreement with all the painful restrictions that the country had to bare?

I am, etc.,

BRUCE GOLDING