Due process being followed for repossession of undeveloped EBD lands

Due process being followed for repossession of undeveloped EBD lands – Govt.

Mar 03, 2017 News

Efforts by the government to make lands available for its housing development programmes will see focus being placed on the hundreds of acres of prime lands that were sold to private developers, especially on the

Some of the lands to private developers in Providence, EBD, which are still way behind in construction.

East Bank of Demerara.
Many of these lands were issued under the previous administration to be developed as housing areas, but have been left largely unfinished.
“We believe it is not right for large swaths of lands to be lying idle while we are trying our best all around to find land for people,” Minister of State, Joseph Harmon said at yesterday’s post-Cabinet media briefing held at the Ministry of the Presidency.
The minister was responding to questions about the lands and seeming sloth to repossess more than 400 acres of them. The lands in question stretch from Eccles to Little Diamond.
During the previous administration, several private developers were given large tracts of land, under the agreement that they would develop housing estates within certain time.
Some of those lands have been in the control of the private developers over five years now.
The current administration, on assuming office, found that many of the developers had sub-divided and sold off the lands as house lots at prices, in some cases, 10 times more than what they would have paid for them.
Since the discovery, the new administration would have served the private developers notice, indicating that they must complete the infrastructural works and housing units that they had committed to under the agreement of sale of the lands.
The developers were put on notice that “once the time had expired and nothing significant was done, then the government will enter into renegotiation, with the view of repossessing these lands for better use by the community,” Minister Harmon highlighted.
Harmon explained that the government is still working towards this process of repossessing these lands, especially as it seeks to have the land space to pursue its new initiative of developing housing units for low-income earners.
The minister however noted that due process must be followed.
Recently, Minister of Communities, Ronald Bulkan, had told the media that the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) had sought legal advice from the Attorney General on moving forward to repossess the lands. The lands were allocated by the former administration under unclear circumstances to a few businessmen, a Parliamentarian, contractors, and other individuals.
In the development of the housing units of town houses, duplexes and apartments, the government is also in discussion with the Guyana Sugar Corporation to acquire lands for the construction of the units, Minister Harmon said.
The minister explained that in the restructuring of the sugar company, one of the options that is available to the government is the utilisation of several other acres of land that will no longer be utilised for the cultivation of sugar cane.
CH&PA, the housing arm of Government, has over around 25,000 applications for house lots and turn-key homes on file.
A short-term project to build duplexes, condos and small units would only take care of about 1,500 of those applications.
Government has set aside $5B for that two-year project.

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