With over 30,000 land applications on file at the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GL&SC), government is preparing to open new areas for development across the country, GL&SC Commissioner Trevor Benn says.
“As a country, we have not opened up new land development areas since the late 1960s. We have over 32,000 applications and every day [we] receive hundreds more, so we will be opening new lands soon,” Benn told Stabroek News in an interview. “We have to open new areas and that is a priority at this time,” he added.
Benn would not give details of where the new developments are located as he pointed out that it could lead to a flood of new applications—a situation that the agency, with already limited resources, doesn’t want at this time. He explained that when persons heard of locations where the proposed natural gas pipelines are to be landed onshore, as well as other planned oil and gas developments government has planned, there was “a flood of applications for those areas.”