The Housing Ministry will be moving to re-possess and re-allocate those lots that have been left idle for some time in Region Five, Minister Irfaan Ali said on Wednesday.
“A number of persons have been allocated house lots and have not built as yet. We are in the process of re-possessing all of those lots because it is unfair for your neighbours who would have built and it is unfair for persons who are waiting when you have the lot idling,” Ali was quoted as saying by the Government Information Agency (GINA) at a ‘One Stop Shop’ allocation exercise at the Blairmont Community Centre Ground, West Coast Berbice.
The Ministry of Housing through the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) hosted the exercise, where 646 house lots were processed for persons who were allocated lots in the Hope/Experiment Housing Scheme in Region Five.
GINA said the Ministry of Housing had received more than 1,060 applications for lots in Region Five. It explained that after Wednesday’s exercise, there will be just over 400 persons who will still be awaiting the allocation of house lots.
Minister Ali said that this is a tremendous accomplishment towards satisfying the housing requirement for the people of the region. He said that his ministry was hoping to allocate the entire 1,000 lots but scarcity of land has resulted in difficulty of locating areas that can be used for housing.
“One of the great challenges we have in Region Five for the development of housing is the multi-use of land.
Land here is generally agriculture-based and a lot of the prime land that is good for housing is occupied for the use of agriculture purposes. This presents a very big challenge for the planning department in planning development schemes,” he explained.
GINA noted that government is investing more than $413.5M on infrastructure development of the Hope /Experiment Housing Scheme, which is expected to directly benefit more than 2563 people. Although the scheme is only just over 43% completed, Ali explained that the ministry is allotting the lots before completion to afford the allottees the opportunity to ready themselves for occupancy immediately following completion. This is part of an approach of ensuring high occupancy of the developing schemes.
“We have found when we do it this way, we give you an opportunity to settle your banking issues, your design issues, your house plan, and …so by the time the infrastructure is completed you are ready to move towards construction, and your lot and the infrastructure are not left idle after construction,” Ali said.
The exercise was the eighth ‘One Stop Shop’ exercise for 2012 and the second this year for the region.
