Illegal occupation of Linden house lots…. Minister promises to let police intervene to evict squatters who refuse to move

Sep 23, 2017 News

Minister responsible for Housing, Valerie Patterson-Yearwood

Ministry of Communities with Responsibility for Housing, Mrs. Valerie Patterson-Yearwood says she is peeved that some people deliberately squatted on a plot of land she identified for the construction of 60 concrete homes, while others squatted on land they claimed they leased from Lands and Survey.
The Minister made these comments during a recent visit to Linden.
Patterson-Yearwood said that most of the lots were allocated in March to nurses and teachers, but she was told that a number of people were occupying lands for farming in Amelia’s Ward and other communities.
She noted that the palls placed by the surveyors years ago were removed by the squatters. However, the surveyors from Georgetown have since replaced them, so people can now identify their lots.
According to the Minister, a man who is occupying three lots is believed to have spearheaded an attack on her officers about three weeks ago.
“Now I want to say to the people who have occupied that particular area, those lots are residential lots, not for farming. They have been allocated to persons since the month of March.
Ppersons have paid for those lots and they are the rightful owners of those lots. Any person who is resisting our rightful owners from occupying, I will turn the matter into the hands of the police because we cannot continue to allow this to go on.”
Minister Patterson Yearwood said that if those lands were owned by Lands and Surveys it would not have appeared on Housing Ministry’s plans.
She also noted that Lands and Surveys officials did not take anybody on the grounds to show them their boundaries, so they are claiming the wrong lots.
The Minister said that since March, a squatter has built a house and even planted on one lot.
During a previous visit in the Amelia’s Ward area the Minister said that some people were asked to stop building, but others ignored the order.
“Because they were so smart they built behind the bushes, but now it (the area) is clear we are seeing the houses. I had discussions with those persons, they have to break down; some are strong concrete structures.”
The Minister said she decided to allocate another plot of land to those whose houses were demolished, but will impose a heavy penalty on those who have concrete structures.
“Heavy, and when I say heavy more than the cost of their houses because we have to send a strong message, you just cannot go and squat. If we didn’t have that additional piece of land we would have had to break those concrete houses; because Government has a plan and that plan was publicized a long time ago and people deliberately built.”
Minister Patterson-Yearwood also said that some wooden structures have to be demolished because they are not going to fit in the aesthetics of the new Housing plan.
She also noted that land is already cleared for the building of the first 60 concrete, two- bedroom turn key homes. Thirty will be flat houses three feet off the ground and the other 30 will be built on stilts. “We are registering people and issuing prequalification letters to take to the bank which means once the bank qualifies them for the $5.1M and $6.1M, it means as we complete them…people could occupy them once they are qualified by the Bank.”
The Minister claimed that the plan to build 60 houses at Wisroc is at a standstill, because the Wisroc Co-op has been defunct for a number of years. Residents are being urged to have the Co-op resuscitated.
With regards to the expansion of the Scheme and the new home owners paying their taxes to the council the Minister noted that the matter is in the hands of the Permanent Secretary.

1 thoughts on “Illegal occupation of Linden house lots…. Minister promises to let police intervene to evict squatters who refuse to move”

Janet James September 23, 2017 at 9:15 am

People who occupy unlawfully other people lands should be imprisoned . A bankrupt conman named John Pyneandy is illegally occupying land he does not own and he has build a concrete structure on the land without planning permission. How is this allowed? You can build anywhere, Guyana has no laws? John Pneandy says another conman ex-home affairs minster sold him the land ,even though this ex-minister does own the land. It looks like conman Jeffrey Thomas has conned conman JohnPyneany. The conman has conned the conman. Is Guyana called the Land of conmen?