Hon. Alvera Maduro-Caines, Sixth District Representative, said that some persons are using the COVID-19 pandemic to deliberately not pay rent to their landlords. She said that these delinquent tenants are working.

"Tenants if you are working pay your landlord, pay your rent, you have no excuse not to pay rent. If you are working a half salary, speak to your landlord, some maybe understanding, some may not be understanding but I know it’s a half and half. Don’t just say nothing and don’t pay rent," she said last evening, September 29 during the sitting of the House of Assembly.

The government backbencher added, "My advice to you is to pay something, organize some structure with your landlord. Don’t just feel that you can go about and not paying any rent because you are on a half salary. I know a good friend of mine, every time she gets paid, she pays whether $100, $200 to the landlord, and the landlord understands."

The Sixth District Representative said there also continues to be greedy and cold behaviour coming from landlords as well.

"Now they are others who are evil and selfish. This one young man who lived in the landlord's house for over 20 years, has been affected (by COVID-19), ran into difficulties…He has been asked to vacate the premises," she said.

She lamented that this is simply a cold act.

"That is what I call evil. If you have someone living in your house for over 20 years always on time with rent, fall into a problem, speak to the landlord, but he said he has nothing to do with that, leave if you cannot pay," she opined.

Some persons have also complained about landlords increasing their rent if another family member is to temporarily live with them.

"Then there is another scenario, persons affected by COVID have to go live with family. Now you have a landlord say I rented this place for four persons, you bring in a fifth one it cannot work, I don’t want a fifth one in there," the Government legislator stated.

She added, "then some landlords saying the fifth could come, but the rent will go up by $200 until that person leaves. It's not like the landlord has to build another room to house this other person."

Hon. Maduro-Caines said during this pandemic persons have to be more understanding of people's needs and help as much as they can.

"Sometimes I truly want to know where the humanitarian aspect of us has gone as a people and how did we reach to this point, where some of us have become greedy, cold and heartless. We need to do better as a people in a time like this," the Sixth District Representative stated.