800 Guyanese get house lots at Grove/Diamond

…“we are working to ease application backlog” – Minister Croal reassures

Some 800 Guyanese on Friday became owners of house lots as the Housing Ministry through the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) held its first “Dream Realised” housing drive for this year.
The house lots distributed during the exercise held at the Guyana National Stadium at Providence, East Bank Demerara, fall within the Grove/Diamond Block-1 Housing Development and were allocated to moderate, middle, and high-income citizens.

The location was described as “well-sought after” since it is “perfectly placed” between the two major secondary highways – the Diamond to Mandela Road and the bypass road that will connect the East Coast with the East Bank of Demerara.
Delivering the feature address, Housing Minister Collin Croal disclosed that in keeping with the People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government’s promise to deliver 50,000 house lots, his Ministry last year handed out some 10,000 lots across the country. This year, he revealed, the Ministry is aiming to distribute another 15,000 house lots.
But Minister Croal posited that this target cannot be achieve without changing the way business is done at the Ministry by making its services more efficient and effective as well as accessible. To this end, the CH&PA has reintroduced e-applications and submissions for land allocation for both residential and commercial uses.
“So, when you previously had to travel from Berbice, Essequibo or Linden to Georgetown, you can now get your status update done online… This is important because I keep saying the volume of persons we continuously see every morning at the Central Ministry of Housing is not needed,” Croal stressed.
He added that the Ministry has even established offices in Regions Two, Three, Five, Six, Nine and 10, where persons can make enquiries about their allocation status.
According to the Housing Minister, these systems are designed to reduce the challenges that existed before. In the same vein, he urged Guyanese who want lands to be patient and follow the right procedures, and not seek help through third parties who are only after their money.
“We are aware that there are still people who fall prey to unscrupulous individuals who are pretending that they are in some special position to ‘help you get a house lot’. We are also aware that those persons will ask you to pay them to help you get the lot. I want to say this here now, absolutely no one has to pay [a third party] to get a house lot… If you are aware of such persons, bring it to our attention,” the Minister implored.
He went on to disclose that the Ministry is already in receipt of the names of several such persons and have engaged the Guyana Police Force. However, he noted that they would first need statements from victims in order to successfully prosecute these culprits.
Nevertheless, Minister Croal reassured persons that once their application is in the system, they are guaranteed to get a house lot.
“Granted that it may take some time [but] as we have demonstrated these past few months, we are working quickly to ease the backlog. I appreciate and understand that your waiting can become frustrating at times, but the infrastructure requirements for the development of those housing areas can be quite considerable. Land acquisition is another task. But we have promised to allocate house lots in areas… where we would put in before those persons are able to access those areas, the basic infrastructure of roads, drainage, electricity, water, open spaces such as green parks and other similar elements that are required to make a [community] complete,” Croal asserted.
To this end, the Housing Minister outlined that in pursuing this infrastructural trajectory they will be pursuing several projects that will see rapid infrastructural development in several housing areas and the construction of major roads, especially along the East Bank.
“The East Bank corridor is seeing an injection of infrastructural projects from this PPP/C Government as well as the Private Sector. This obviously augurs well for the community and I’m happy to report that the infrastructure works at Prospect, Little Diamond, Great Diamond [and Providence Blocks 1 and 2] and then taking into consideration the four-lane Highway from Mandela to Eccles, which is almost complete… when you combine that infrastructure cost, we are speaking about an injection of $6.8 million,” the Minister noted.
He went on to reveal that another $14.8 billion will be spent for other infrastructural projects along the East Bank corridor for which contracts are in the signing stage and works are slated to begin shortly.
Additionally, the Guyana Water Inc has also been working tirelessly to improve the access to safe, reliable and affordable water supply along the East Bank corridor, especially in those new housing areas that are being developed.
These efforts, according to Croal, are aimed at improving access for new landowners.
Against this backdrop, Minister within the Housing Ministry, Susan Rodrigues outlined at Friday’s event that the “Dream Realised” initiative is not just about distributing lands but rather ensuring that recipients are equipped to start building.
“We want you to move beyond having a plot of land. We want you to achieve homeownership,” she declared.
Minister Rodrigues further told the recipients; this was the reason Government has made so many interventions like zero-rating construction materials and inviting commercial banks at every allocation exercise so that landowners can access to them.
“So, once you receive your allocation, you can approach the banks and you can find out how to qualify for a loan and what are the requirements that you need, how long will the process take and you start to plan financially to get to that point. We want to promote occupancy in our housing schemes. We don’t want large plots of land laying down there and nobody occupying them. We want vibrancy, we want to bring life into our housing schemes,” she posited.
In addition, the Junior Housing Minister noted that they have also been partnering with private contractors to construct houses in some of these schemes so that persons can have the option of choosing a pre-built home if they do not want to go through the stress of constructing one.
Meanwhile, apart from the 800 house lots distributed on Friday, approximately 300 Land Titles and Transports were also handed over to Guyanese during Friday’s “Dream Realised” exercise. (G8)