The opposition coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), flaying government for a “politically motivated housing programme”, touted an integrated approach that guarantees employment and social services close to communities.
Addressing a few dozen at Westminster Street Parfait Harmonie on Sunday evening, former PNC Member of Parliament Mervyn Williams took the PPP/C administration to task on a number of issues including government’s much vaunted housing sector.
“We will ensure that housing schemes will be properly conceived to take care of the need for economical advancement of the citizens who reside in those communities,” said Williams.
He said that government has been tinkering with the population in Regions Three, Four and Six to secure political advantages. He claimed that predominantly opposition supporters from Region Four have been allocated house lots in Region Three and pro-PPP supporters from Region Six are being allocated housing lands in Diamond, Region Four. Parfait Harmonie is one of the new housing schemes created.
“They are seeking to balance out the demographics in your favour but in the process of so doing, they are putting additional pressures and economic burdens on the people that they bring here because when they lived in Georgetown, they walked to work if they had a job but when they come here they have to pay a mortgage with the help of their families from abroad,’ he said.
Taking a pot-shot at Housing Minister, Irfaan Ali, Williams said the minister’s father was a PNCR member who had been responsible for overseeing the better planned and designed Leonora Sea Spray Housing Scheme. “Irfan Ali daddy help fuh wuk pond at housing scheme and Irfaan Ali stand up and say PNC never do nothing for housing.
“If you go into Crane and Phoenix Park, you would see the kind of structural development that took place; not the nonsense that passes now,” he told the gathering.
Williams, who was at one time a Region Three councillor and PNCR parliamentary point-man on agriculture later told Stabroek News that the drainage has never been fixed in Parfait Harmonie, one time sugar land.
“We are going to ensure that all these defects are repaired because we believe that people must be comfortable and people must be guaranteed jobs to earn income to buy their own laptop,” he said.
Williams said APNU would ensure that the housing sector takes into consideration the social, employment and other needs of Guyanese.
He said that currently people are building houses from overseas remittances and they were struggling to maintain them because of low wages and high cost of living including steep transportation costs for themselves and families to go to work and school. His statements were met with much applause, shaking of heads and vocal agreement with some adding that the worst was having to deal with the Demerara Harbour Bridge crossing woes and sending their children to school in the city. One man exclaimed, “all meh money is go in passage for me and dem children. School till in town we want a good school in Parfait.” Another said, “And don’t talk about de bank and de mortgage that like a burden pun yuh back.”
To which Williams added, “It’s nice to say you got a home but when I have to suffer because I own a home, that’s not real development.” He said he feared that eventually many of the houses there and in other parts of Guyana would crumble in the absence of sustainable income.
