Minister within the Ministry of Communities, Valerie Sharpe-Patterson visited Perseverance, East Bank Demerara on Wednesday where she discovered vandalism of the turn-key homes which have already been allocated, GINA said yesterday. Doors, windows, pipelines and galvanised sheets have been stolen from the houses.
According to Sharpe-Patterson, the Ministry will now have to foot the cost of repairing the houses before persons can occupy them.
There are about 100 turn-key homes already allocated in Perseverance, but, only 45 of them are occupied. The other occupants are in the process of casting their yards, and constructing bridges and fences among other works before occupying them.
As the occupancy rate increases, the Ministry of Communities will have to look at putting security measures in place, GINA said. The Minister said that some of the options that will be explored include, having a police outpost in the community, and the creation of a Community Policing Group.
“We’ve also discussed the idea, because we have a lot of men and women from the Guyana Defence Force and police officers who have indicated their interest in those homes, and we are going to allocate some to them…We will further engage the Guyana Police Force to have an outpost so that they can bring more security consciousness within the area,” Sharpe-Patterson explained.
She was however pleased with the level of occupancy in the area. “Some persons have begun to fence their yards, grill their home, and replace the wooden bridges with concrete structures and that’s really nice, it really looks good,” she said.
Two hundred homes currently under construction in phase two of the turn-key homes project are scheduled to be completed within six weeks. The houses cost $4.9M ($4.4M for the house and $500,000 for the land), GINA said.
