Anti-poor government of the worst kind

Jul 19, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My quarrel here is not with Mr. Eddie Boyer who just bought 103 acres of prime real estate next to where I live for $600M. Mr. Boyer fell upon a good deal and he grabbed it. Of course it is no secret in Guyana, not Georgetown, but Guyana that Mr. Boyer shares a close friendship with Mr. Jagdeo. Let us do some basic real estate calculations. Where I live (in the same area where Mr. Boyer got his 103 acres), lots of 1/8 acres (for simplicity sake that is half of a quarter of an acre) are going for $15M. Now don’t contradict me.

I am fully aware people have bought lots where I live for that price. When persons I know made enquiries, that price was quoted to them. The residents of the community where I live got an e-mail from the son-in-law of a Minister advertising his second plot for sale and the price was over $10M. Now don’t forget we are talking about 1/8 of an acre. In other places, like Continental Park, Happy Acres, plots less than 1/8 acre are going for around $10M. What this means then is that Mr. Boyer paid $5.8M per acre for extremely valuable real estate in an area of Georgetown that is totally marketable and which if the Government had split the site into house lots would have got five billion dollars at current market rate.

Where Mr. Boyer bought has the following names – the CARICOM Secretariat, the Olympic swimming pool, Convention Centre, University Gardens where the super-rich and the diplomats live, the Beharry family home, the residence of the US Ambassador, the gated community of the Gaffoor complex, the imminent Giftland Office Max super mall. If the Government has divided that 103 acres site into pieces of 1/8 acre and sold each for $6m, the take would have been immediate. The next day, none would have been available. Because of the area, rich folks would have purchased the land for their kids or even speculate. Instead the Government sold each acre for $5.8M when that could have been $48m. The total estate then could have netted the Government five billion dollars.

Of course the question of infrastructure comes in. To sell real estate for housing, there has to be infrastructural development. Mr. Boyer would have to spend a few dozen millions more to landscape the project. But the Government could have done the same as it did with other housing estates. It put an extra requirement on purchaser to fund the engineering works. So let us say that it put an additional million on purchasers making it $7M for the plot, the extra would have funded the engineering side of things. Instead, Mr. Boyer got prime real estate for $600M and the Treasury lost four and a half billion dollars.

Enter the immigration debate. When the PPP came to power, that very site that Mr. Boyer acquired plus the district behind the CARICOM Secretariat plus space that was empty at the time where I now live was requested by the University community for housing purposes. The rejection by both the Cheddi Jagan and Janet Janet Governments was swift. Instead, the Government gave the acres where I now live to employees from Guysuco. Then CARICOM got a piece and now Mr. Eddie Boyer has moved in. The UG community was given absolutely nothing. The boast continues of course that UG was founded by Dr. Jagan himself. But after Jagan came to power and the PPP leaders that succeeded him, they didn’t like what they saw at UG. It wasn’t a PPP enclave. This made the house lot claim by UG staff a lost cause. Why give house lots to people who are not of your kind.

Every year, CARICOM heads decide on strategies to stop the flow of skilled teachers, nurses and professionals from the region. It is pathetic that no CARICOM head has told the present Guyanese leaders, given the large land space we have, teachers, doctors and nurses will stay if they are given titles to build their own homes. Why has the State sold that land to Mr. Boyer rather than parceling it out for the professional classes and long-serving University staff? Of course it won’t stop here. Guyana is large and there are humongous areas near to where Mr. Boyer bought that will fall to rich classes. The Guyanese people cannot be so blind to see how anti-poor and anti-working class is their government.

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Anti-poor government of the worst kind

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