Do not reward law-breakers

Sep 13, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The easiest way to get a government house lot in Guyana is to squat on Government reserves. The government will quickly reward those who break the laws by squatting; it will reward them with Government house lots, often at subsidized rates.
Squatters run things in Guyana! They squat on Government reserves and they are given Government lots. They either return to the place on which they are squatting or they rent out the spot.
There are hundreds of persons who are placing the lives of forty per cent of Guyana’s population at risk of cholera. These persons are squatting on the banks of major drainage canals in the city.
Their bodily wastes are disposed into these canals. The canals cannot be cleaned because of the encumbrances of the squatter structures. The canals get clogged up with weeds and when it rains it overtops into the residential areas.
The country is sitting on a ticking time bomb. It is only a matter of time before cholera breaks out. The consequences will be tragic for Guyana.
Vendors are squatters. They contribute to the build-up of garbage in the city. This past week the Town Clerk was criticized for removing some of them from Robb Street, between Alexander and Bourda Streets. They leave the place untidy and blame the lack of dumping facilities for the nastiness of the area.
Food should not be sold under those conditions. It constitutes a threat to the health of citizens. In any Caribbean country vending food on the pavements and along the road edges of Robb Street would have been outlawed. But guess what? The health of citizens is secondary to the need to accommodate illegal vending and squatting.
The situation is not getting better with each passing day. On the pavement on Regent Street there is a barber who is plying his trade on the pavement where thousands have to pass each day.
Now we are learning that further regularization of squatters is to take place. The Housing Department of the Ministry of Housing is looking for land to place squatters. Persons occupying the reserves illegally are going to be given land by the government. It pays to be a squatter in Guyana.
The recent census reports that as much as 10.5% of Guyana’s building stock is unoccupied. If Guyana has such a high rate of unoccupied buildings – one of the highest in the world – how come there are so many squatters.
Migration is one answer. People have gone away and they do not want to rent out their houses because when they come back they want somewhere to stay. There are many homeowners in Guyana who are afraid of renting out their homes because of the high rate of rental default in this country. Taking tenants to court is long-winded process and therefore house owners prefer not to rent but to leave the building unoccupied.
The problem is not a shortage of places for people to live. The PPPC distributed over 50,000 house lots. Houses have been constructed on most of these. We do not have a housing shortage. We have too many houses and not enough people to occupy these houses. This is why there are so many unoccupied houses in Guyana.
There is squatting because thousands of persons who were property owners were able to obtain Government house lots because of the Wild West “One Stop Shop” system which the Ministry of Housing employed under the PPPC. There was and still is no effective system of ascertaining who owns property and therefore who is not qualified for a house lot. The system has been abused left, right and centre and there are thousands of persons who were property owners who managed to gain Government house lots.
The government does not need to find any land to place squatters. Squatters should be removed. They should not be rewarded. At the same time, all those persons who signed statutory declarations saying that they never owned a property before, when in fact, they were double dipping, should be taken to court civilly for making false statements to the Ministry of Housing. They should be asked to surrender their house lot and the structures they have erected on these lands.
There is no need to find land for squatters. Find the dishonest Government house lot owners and repossess the house lots in accordance with the law and after due process.

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