Government apartments a big mistake, waste of scarce resources – fmr CH&PA Director

The stated move by Government to engage private developers to construct apartment buildings for among others, State employees, is being met with resistance. The move by Government comes even as thousands of Guyanese are currently waiting on the processing of their house lot applications.

Former Director of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA) Board, Mohamed Khan, has called the proposed move by Government not only a big mistake, but also a waste of scarce resources.

Khan, the former CHPA Director, was at the time responding to reports that several hundred acres of land has been identified for housing, including the building of homes and apartment buildings for State employees.

According to Khan, apartment buildings were built in 1989 by the late Hugh Desmond Hoyte’s Government but this had failed. He pointed to the cost of maintenance of those apartments by the occupier as being “huge and was milking them of their resources.”

Speaking to some of the problems that had arisen out of the Hoyte’s apartment building programme, Khan pointed to constraints on the part of the occupier of the unit who was made to carry out all work ordered by any competent public authority in respect of the apartment.

“Many of the occupiers couldn’t enjoy the common property in the manner for which it was designed; often there were complaints of noise nuisance and hazard to the occupier by an occupier of another apartment.”

According to Khan, “my take on this whole issue is that Guyana has 83,000 square miles with a population of about 700,000 people, and still the present and previous Governments have been finding it hard to find land for the 10,000 outstanding applicants.”

He said “with 83,000 square miles of land, every Guyanese should be able to own a big plot of land to build their house and have land space to do some subsistence gardening which will help augment their small income, but it seems to me we do not have good planners in the Government systems to guide our Ministers.”

According to Khan, when the Government builds apartments, the occupiers will have no space to plant a kitchen garden or even a flower garden, “so what kind of planning is this… This plan will have little or no impact on the applicants’ needs.”

He posited that an evaluation of the nature and forms of housing in Guyana for over three decades to 2016 would lead to the conclusion that there had been no recognisable policy and programme in place. “There was a better policy in 1972 under the National Development Plan, where the house lots were bigger with all the necessary infrastructure in place before the applicant occupied their land in the schemes.”

Khan reminds that at the time, the Central Board of Health inspectors had to inspect the new schemes and make sure that all infrastructure was in place before the first and second certificates were issued to the Ministry of Housing.

It was pointed out too that in October 1992, when the People’s Progressive Party/Civic took over the reins of Government, it removed these requirements and applicants were given plots of land without the infrastructure in place, in order to facilitate the fast-tracking of certificates of title so the owners could secure mortgages from the banks to build.

The size of the house lot was reduced and the price skyrocketed 10 fold, according to Khan, who suggested that the applicants had no choice because they were badly in need of a piece of land to build a house; many of them were living in rented houses working for a small salary.

“When this new Government first took office on May 11, 2015, they too followed suit, issuing small house lots at the same price without the basic infrastructure in place.”

According to an advertisement in the State-owned newspaper, the Government will be embarking on several projects emanating from its strategic objectives as it relates to Housing for low-income and State employees.

The development is slated to be undertaken along the East Bank of Demerara (EBD), the East Coast of Demerara (ECD) and in Georgetown.

As such, expressions of interest are currently being invited.

The project is expected to be undertaking in three phases – phase one will entail the executing of infrastructural works including land preparation the construction of roads, drains, heavy-duty bridges and the installation of a water distribution network. The second phase according to the Ministry’s invite will be the construction of apartment buildings and single flat houses. The final phase will be the construction of social infrastructure such as recreational facilities, commercial facilities, educational and health facilities.

The areas identified comprise underdeveloped lands at Little and Great Diamond, EBD; Cummings Lodge, ECD; and La Penitence, in Georgetown. Some 150 acres of land has been identified for development in Diamond – lands that had been previously used for cane cultivation.

Lands identified in Cummings lodge totals 99.31 acres while another 2.3 acres have been identified in La Penitence.