Latest update November 21st, 2024 1:00 AM
Providence ‘remigrant’ scheme..Central Housing officer decided who is a remigrant
Launched more than five years ago, the Remigrant Housing Scheme was heralded as a showpiece. It was
Ex-Housing Minister, Irfaan Ali
supposed to offer a glimpse of what it would be like to bring North American living style to Guyana.
But poor planning and administration have left the Providence Gardens project in trouble. There are now questions about who exactly benefitted from the lands.
Two of the persons benefitting are said to be a prominent sportsman who represents Guyana while the other is an executive who has lands at Pradoville Two, East Coast Demerara.
The housing scheme was part of the biggest plan to positively transform the East Bank of Demerara.
Today, just over 100 plots have been sold. Most of the lands remain overgrown.
According to officials of the Ministry of Communities, who are investigating the transactions of the scheme, recent checks found just two completed homes and six others under construction.
Former Housing Minister, Irfaan Ali, whose party lost power in May last year after early elections, had said that over 5,000 applications had come in for lands in the Remigrant scheme.
A few months ago, as land owners complained about conditions, contractors started to build concrete drains and pave roads into the area.
But all that may pale in comparison to what is being discovered.
According to CH&PA, applications for lots in the so-called ‘Remigrant Scheme’ had to be done online on its website.
It appeared that the person processing the applications was a senior official in the Information Technology department.
From indications, he replied to online applications and determined who could be considered a remigrant.
Under the country’s regulations, only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can determine who becomes a remigrant (a person returning to Guyana to live).
Very few homes are being built in the ‘remigrant’ scheme, EDB.
A number of persons who owned lands said that they never had any transactions with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The lands were advertised to be sold for $4M to $7M for each lot, which range between 6,000 square feet to 8,000 square feet.
However, in a number of cases persons paid $10M or $13M, indicating an inconsistency in how the lands were sold.
According to CH&PA’s online brochure, to be eligible for one of the lots, the applicant must be a Guyanese, 18 years and older.
The brochure is a little sketchy here, saying the successful application must show he or she resided legally overseas for at least five years.
The successful ‘remigrant’ could also be a Guyanese student attending or has attended a training institution and residing overseas for at least four years.
According to the Ministry’s officials, while the Land Administration Division is supposed to be responsible for managing the project, there is little evidence of an official policy on how the scheme would have been administered.
The programme requires allottees to build within six months.
However, the absence of infrastructure works, like drains and roads, saw disinterest by land owners.
CH&PA did nothing to enforce the timelines, similar to the little monitoring it did with the hundreds of acres of lands it sold to private developers on East Bank Demerara.
The ‘remigrant’ scheme is located north of the Mocha Main Road, about one mile east of the Providence Police Station compound.
In many cases, the ‘remigrant’ lands were sold to overseas-based Guyanese who saw it as an investment. There was no hurry to start building as CH&PA was not moving to enforce its six-month construct regulations.
The authority also appeared not to have set out conditions where the successful applicant has to show evidence that he or she is returning with the family to live within a certain period.
Rather, according to various news reports, the ‘remigrant’ scheme, according former Minister Ali, would become kind of like a vacation home.
The emerging evidence would indicate how overtime CH&PA kept changing the story.
CH&PA is facing intense fire from the David Granger administration for a number of housing projects, lands allocation and billions of dollars it has been spending annually.
The new Board is set this week to decide whether it should send home two senior officials pending an investigation.
Government has been complaining about the quality of homes under a 1,000-homes project at Perseverance, behind Providence, East Bank Demerara saying that it reeks of corruption.
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