15,000 new house lots, 20 new housing areas by June – Collin Croal

…as Opposition MP questions Govt. delivery of 50,000 house lots

Housing and Water Minister Collin Croal has defended the $135.7 billion allocation in Budget 2025 to his ministry, as he outlined how these monies will be spent including on the development of some 15,000 new house lots and 20 new housing areas – all by June of this year.

The minister was at the time making his contributions to the ongoing debates on the $1.382 trillion 2025 Budget in the National Assembly on Wednesday.
According to Croal, his ministry has laid a solid foundation from 2020 to 2024 by being prudent stewards of the budgetary allocations it receives.
In fact, he noted, of the sum allocated to the Housing and Water Ministry this year, some $112.6 billion is dedicated to the housing sector and see major advancement towards achieving the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration’s 2020 Manifesto promise of delivering 50,000 house lots to Guyanese by the end of its five-year term in office.
This, the Housing Minister noted, will see the allocation of over 20,000 new house lots this year and the development of more than 20 new housing schemes.
“We will allocate an additional – a minimum of 25,000 house lots this year, of which over 15,000 will be accomplished before June of this year. We will establish 20 new housing areas by June of 2025 to accomplish these 15,000 by June. We will construct a minimum of 1000 houses,” Croal posited during his presentation in the House.
He was at the time responding to Shadow Housing Minister, Annette Ferguson, who sought to throw aspersion on the Government’s housing plans.
Ferguson had served as Housing and Water Minister from April 2019 to August 2020 under the A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Administration.
According to the Opposition Member of Parliament, “Over the past four years, [the PPP/C Government is] yet to present a clear and comprehensive plan to tackle the pressing housing needs of our citizens.”
Responding to critics about housing development under the Coalition regime, she stated that some $2 billion were spent to rectify issues within the housing sector including a backlog of 60,000 pending house lot applications and unprocessed land titles that they inherited back in 2015.
Moreover, Ferguson went onto question the PPP/C Administration’s Manifesto promise of 50,000 house lots to be delivered by the end of its term in office later this year.
She noted that the Coalition had left behind a number of housing developments, and accused the PPP/C of using those to claim its accomplishment of the manifesto promise.
“I know the Honourable Member, the Ministry never issued out 50,000 house lots… He will come here to say that we give out 7,000 house lots but you know what, the very house lots what we give out – the 7000, they are claiming ownership. So, no way; no way has this People’s Progressive Party issued 50,000 house lots,” the Opposition Parliamentarian contended, as she challenged the Housing Minister to provide a list of the 85 new housing schemes that were development under the current administration.
In response, Minister Croal dismissed the Opposition’s “badmouth” of the work his ministry had done, detailing a breakdown of the new housing areas that were developed in each region which saw some 40,808 regularised residential lots issued over the past four years.
In these new housing schemes, some 791 new house lots were issued in Region Two; 9,172 lots in Region Three; 24,519 lots in Region Four; 1,959 lots in Region Five; 1,959 lots in Region Six; 132 lots in Region Seven; 676 lots in Region Nine, and 1,598 new house lots in Region 10, where the Coalition only allocated 404 new house lots in its five years in office, despite the region being its stronghold.
With regard to Region One, Croal said this housing development is being completed this year while in Region Eight, the new housing areas have already been designed and the house lots will be allocated soon. These are in addition to the over 824 lands issued for commercial and industrial developments in Regions Two, Three, Four and 10.
According to the housing minister, the Coalition only developed three new housing areas, which were lands already acquired by the previous PPP/C administration and while they built 20 houses, the gamut of their commitments to Guyanese went unfulfilled.
Croal went onto highlight the series of accomplishments under the PPP/C, ranging from its delivery of house lots to measures for making home ownership easier like lowered mortgage interest rates and from infrastructure development in communities to major highways.
In the water sector, Minister Croal posited that some 40,000 residents were provided with first-time access to potable water and this has increased from 46 per cent in 2020 to now 91 per cent at end of 2024. This is coupled with the construction of new water treatment plants across the coastland, the drilling of more than 100 wells to enhance water access in hinterland communities and is now on track to deliver full treated water coverage before the end of 2025.
“It’s January 29 [2025] and I can confidently say in this House today that we are on the cusp of full achievement of [our] targets. We have now completed over 95 per cent of those commitments [in the water sector… These are our achievements to date [and] we still have a few months to go. There are real achievements, there are real fulfilment of the promises we made to the people of Guyana. They trusted us and we have delivered. Today, our government is working tirelessly to ensure that every Guyanese have access to affordable and sustainable housing and to reliable supply of clean and safe water. We have delivered on every front at the Ministry of Housing and Water…”
“Our investments are not just about building houses, they are about creating communities, they are about empowering citizens and they are about ensuring that every Guyanese have access and a place to call their home. The allocations to the ministry of housing and water are justified and essentially, they represent a commitment to correcting past mismanagement and building a future where every citizen can thrive,” Minister Croal asserted.