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Squatting on our roads and government reserves

Feb 23, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Guyana is on a great infrastructural makeover; old roads are being upgraded as well as newer roads are going up all over this country. It is a massive undertaking which transitions Guyana, into a modern state. However, amidst this modern improvement we can still see the residual effects of squatting and other forms of lawlessness. With the opening up of every new road or housing area, squatters come rushing in to take up lodgment on every available land space there may be. This crazy ad-hoc arrangement must be curbed if not put an end to it.

I am also talking about the illegal parking of vehicles on the newly built roads and parapets. These are supposed to be reserves open for the free movement of vehicular traffic and not public spaces for parking.

Road shoulders and parapets is land earmarked for the laying down of water and sewer lines as well as the planting of poles for electricity and telecommunication lines. These are the infrastructural works that one sees in a modern society.

Squatting or the illegal occupation of government reserves takes away the beauty of any place, and this must not be allowed to continue. I speak from experience of a growing problem in my area of West Canje, here persons have illegally taken up GuySuCo’s lands, dams and drainage channels. As time progresses, these very same people are looking out for roads, telecommunication cables and the general ingress and egress comforts from those landlocked places.

Well, with the regularization of these areas, those comforts can be put in place, but the problem that looms ahead is the refusal of some of the squatters to remove from the direct path of, let’s say, a road, water, or telecommunication routeway. The squatters are now looking forward to the government to rectify their position, that is, forcing legal title holders of lands to remove their boundaries to facilitate the establishment of such features.

That is not going to happen, in that occupancy of government reserves cannot be accommodated by legal title holders when there is land available for that purpose, let the illegal occupiers of government reserves realign themselves either by removal or by relocation. What I find hilarious is that some of the squatters who are in that web of illegal occupation are threatening the authorities that if they are to be removed, they would not vote for the PPP/C, and some officials of the party seem to be accommodating of this foolishness and bow to this kind of pressure. I am saying in the interest of fairness and transparency, I am of the view that every Guyanese irrespective of race, religion, status or whatever his political persuasion, has a right to have his piece of this homeland called Guyana, but this has to be done by legal means. Squatting under illegal terms the likes of which I have explained above cannot be allowed to continue. There is a simple solution to this problem and this has to be worked on immediately.

I have spoken to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of Region 6 of this development. I am looking forward to resolution of this matter.

Respectfully submitted

Neil Adams

(Squatting on our roads and government reserves)

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