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Private housing developers given preference over poor Guyanese – APNU
– Party wants inquiry into Housing Ministry
Parliament’s largest Opposition faction, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), has joined calls for a review of the system used by the administration to allocate large tracts of lands, across the country, to private developers.
APNU MP, Joe Harmon
AFC Leader,
Khemraj Ramjattan
Yesterday, APNU Member of Parliament, Joseph Harmon, who overlooks public infrastructure development, said that the coalition has been studying the issue for awhile now and has prepared a list of questions to be tabled in the National Assembly which reconvenes this month.
Harmon’s disclosure comes one day after Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan, revealed that his party is finalizing a number of questions on Government’s housing programme.
The questions have to do with lands earmarked for housing that have been placed under the control of several private developers who are reportedly building gated communities and other homes. The homes are selling for millions.
Government has said that the public-private partnership initiative is to ensure that the level of housing standard is improved with the introduction of new players.
But there has been an absence of information as to what system was used by the Ministry of Housing to allocate the lands.
The tracts are located in prime areas and there have been complaints that ordinary Guyanese were pushed to take up house lots located further behind these.
According to Harmon, the entire housing allocation process has been engaging the attention of APNU.
“We have received complaints… from persons who have purchased a number of those small, turn-key homes at Providence… about the quality of works done. We don’t know who built these homes. We don’t know what kind of supervision was carried out. We don’t know how the contracts were tendered. What we do know is that people have been complaining.”
Large tracts of lands, on the East Bank and West Bank of Demerara are under development. At Leonora, West Coast Demerara, an area reportedly under the control of embattled US-based Guyanese real estate entrepreneur, Edul Ahmad, is under construction.
From Eccles to Providence, hundreds of acres have been allocated to several individuals for the purpose of private development. Still more land has been earmarked or allocated to private individuals, between Herstelling to Little Diamond.
One of the private housing schemes under
development on the East Bank of Demerara.
With the East Bank of Demerara becoming one of the hotspots for housing in the country, the demand for house lots there has been growing in leaps and bounds.
Persons have been complaining that they have waited for years for house lots. Government has already announced plans to open new housing areas in the Soesdyke/Linden area.
“So yes, we are not clear how these private developers got the land. More importantly, if there was a demand for house lots and you go ahead and give these lands to friends and persons close to the Government, then how can this be explained? You are saying that private developers have been given preference over our people, poor Guyanese who badly want a piece of land?”
Like the AFC, Harmon said that questions will include what price Government was paid, when it was paid, and who were the players that have been granted tracts of lands to develop.
APNU will also be joining Ramjattan in asking the Housing Ministry to indicate when the decisions were taken to allocate lands to private developers and whether the process was advertised to allow other interested persons or companies to take part.
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