President Bharrat Jagdeo paid $5 million per acre for land for his home at the new housing development at Sparendaam, East Coast Demerara which has been dubbed ‘Pradoville 2’.
“I’m building a house there. My house has a library, an office, almost everything else that I will be operating from…,” the president said during his first press conference for the year at the Office of the President yesterday. “I’m gonna be in Guyana because many people are speculating where I will be going. I’ll be just here operating…, let me don’t say political environment yet,” he added.
Asked how the land was allocated, he said that land for housing has never gone to tender. “The lands were allocated to people in the cabinet who didn’t have and stuff like that,” he said. “So I had to make arrangements, I needed more privacy too.”
The new housing development is on the land where NCN’s radio transmitter was once sited. The transmitter has been relocated to the West Bank Demerara. Questions have been raised about whether the land was advertised publicly and how it was allocated and valued, among others. Observers say this is crucial as ordinary members of the public are subjected to rigorous guidelines and procedures for the apportioning of land. How the land in a prime spot close to the city could have been allocated to big-wigs only is a source of concern.
“I’ve seen a lot of stuff going around and Stabroek News knows that I’m building a house there,” the President said yesterday. He said it was known too that he had sold his house in Ogle.
“We’ve never gone to tender for land for housing. We tend to allocate these for housing once people are building structures,” the President said. He said that unlike some people in Guyana’s history including presidents, he has paid for the land on which he is building his house. “I paid $5 million per acre, which at the comparable [rate of] land being sold to low income [earners], would be $500,000,” he said.
The President said persons building in the new scheme include cabinet members, professionals, people from the army, police, some regional chairmen… “similar to Pradoville 1”.
