THE Housing Authority of Fiji is putting in all efforts to save taxpayers’ money and also ensuring that tenancy is saved.
These were the comments by the Authority’s CEO, Joshua Wycliffe, after announcing housing loan write-offs for 15 to 20 of its customers.
“We’re not just about spending public money; we make sure of two things that we’re about saving tenancy in not falling into arrears and saving public money,” Mr Wycliffe said.
He said for the past six years, the authority had been able to help people in their database through a government grant to the authority to the value of $2.6million in helping out with arrears.
Mr Wycliffe said the authority’s main priority was to provide social housing to low and middle-income families whose annual salary was less than $15,000.
“The challenge that comes with it obviously would be financial management and financial economic situation, some of this arrears are arrears of people below the $10,000 earning segment, which is the real needy,” Mr Wycliffe said.
He said after talking to customers who had gone into arrears and defaulted in payments, he found out that most of those people had not been able to pay off their housing loans because of some life-changing events that could not have been avoided.
“If this is happening in Fiji, one should manage the situation right from the word go, when you hand over the keys and documents to someone, he or she becomes your customer related to your system and they just don’t become an account number, they become a person and you deal with them on a personal basis,” he said.
“So having a trained analysis or a behavioural pattern on the monthly payment and using that intelligence into a relationship has helped, and this is how the customer relations team work.”
