Leader of the Opposition Joseph Harmon yesterday declined to endorse the call by Prime Minister Mark Phillips for the squatters at Success to accept shelter at the Graham’s Hall Primary School.
“That is a temporary solution which does not address the issue of land…what happens when school reopens?” he asked.
According to Harmon government must work to ensure the squatters are not made refugees in their own country.
“If you moving them from land you have to put them on land,” he maintained while explaining that for him the best solution is the regularization of settlement.
Asked how likely it was that the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) could or would regularize a settlement built on land owned by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) , Harmon stressed that it was all state land.
“The state can regularize it. It is the state’s intervention that had the Prime Minister going to make decisions. GuySuCo, NICIL all of them are agents of the state. They don’t act on their own. It is for the state to treat these people as Guyanese and find a solution that will see these persons placed on land,” he said.
On Friday last Harmon along with several other Opposition parliamentarians visited to the Success area and met with residents.
“We saw, first hand, the harrowing effects of the inhumane decision by the state to flood these persons out of the area,” he told a press conference yesterday.
Harmon and the APNU+AFC have argued that the situation at Success is not only about housing but it is a humanitarian situation.
“The … heartless call of President Irfaan Ali for persons to “do the right thing” while his agents of the state are flooding Guyanese out is unconscionable and heartless. The bulk of these persons are Guyanese who are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have lost their livelihoods and income and have been evicted as a result of their inability to pay rent,” he said, while calling for a humane and caring approach to be adopted by the state.
While responding to questions, Harmon said there is a precedent set by the former PPP/C administration of offering land to residents whom it has relocated for development projects.
He reminded of those residents moved from the former railway embankment along Lamaha Street and stressed that a similar approach can be utilized.
He also noted that government can through research and consultation separate those who truly need help from “speculators” who have opportunistically occupied land in the area.
According to Harmon the squatters who appear to be highly organized have claimed that they were encouraged to occupy the land by members of the PPP/C government while APNU+AFC was still in office.
He however contended that he was not aware of the squatting.
“The extensiveness I could see was very, very recent,” he concluded.
