Dear Editor,
There has been a public outcry since Junior Minister of Communities Valerie Patterson said in her interview with Demerara Waves “We are coming after you,” threatening those who were allocated house lots but who haven’t built on them that she will confiscate them. These can be considered strong words for those granted house lots, and especially for the electorate which has helped to put this coalition government into power. I was fortunate to serve as a board member with three former Ministers of Housing and Water from 1992 to 2003, where a massive programme of housing development took place in all the ten regions of Guyana. Over 50,000 house lots were allocated and 91 housing schemes established.
In those years, no one was threatened with the reallocation of their land, and this Minister is treading on dangerous ground if she pursues her plans to take away people’s freehold and certificates of title when the land was paid off in full and where the people spent three times the purchase price to develop it. In some cases, when some of these lands were allocated to the applicants, they were bush, and people had to hire workmen to cut down trees, get machines to remove tree stumps and roots, and then hire lorries to cart the stuff away.
There were cases where house lots took as much as 50 lorry loads of earth or sand to fill, and that’s a huge sum of money to invest. All the government or the ministry did was to survey the schemes and plant paals; no infrastructure work was done with streets, lights, culverts and pure water supplies in some of these housing schemes. The house lots allocated to some categories of applicant is less than 0.23.12 of an acre of land, which costs $1.2 million in the high income settlements like Diamond. In 1976, under the Ministry of National Development, the house lots were bigger and cheaper with all the necessary infrastructure in place. The Central Board of Health which came under the Ministry of Health had to certify the schemes with first and second certificates before those house lots were allocated to applicants.
In 1992,when the PPP took office the Ministry of Housing removed the criteria of certificates from the Central Board of Health and thereby effected a virtual reversal in policy. The size of a house lot was reduced, although it cost more money, but loans from NBS and other banks with agreements of sale were fast-tracked. The fact remains, no bank will give a loan to any grantee who doesn’t have a monthly income or a regular job. I know of many who were allocated house lots but lost their jobs and couldn’t build a home, although they were willing to do so.
Others borrowed money from family or friends to pay for their house lots, so they could own a piece of land in their name. One day while I was on the East Bank Demerara, my brother who was working with a big construction company took me to the back of Providence stadium and showed me where a few big shots were given large tracts of lands with many house lots. These people were selling the lots to foreign companies; they were conning the system saying they were going to build houses for their employees and they were submitting their names on application forms.
The Junior Minister of Communities should go after these big fish who were selling house lots which were given by the previous administration. Some may use the argument that the former Minister of Housing and Water was reallocating house lots and they are only following suit. Those who are advising the Minister to take this line are driving a nail into the coalition government coffin come next election. Our party and government are different from the PPP; we are not the same, we have a different policy. The President made it quite clear on his elections campaign that he will be for all the people; we did not campaign for this government to be in office for one term; one good term deserves many more good terms. Guyana has 83,000 square miles, and the ministry can open up many more new prime housing schemes for all the outstanding applicants. Guyana has never been able to reach a population of 1,000,000 citizens unless you count those in the diaspora, so the ministry can open up more schemes to fulfil the wishes of the people.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
