Govt will not regularise new squatting areas – Rodrigues

While noting that the government has made tremendous efforts over the past four years in regularising existing squatting areas, Minister within the Housing and Water Ministry, Susan Rodrigues highlighted that the government will not condone the establishment of new illegal housing areas.
She made the comment on Thursday during a recent broadcast of The Guyana Dialogue, where she made reference to a study which was conducted in the late 1990’s. The study revealed that they were over 200 identified squatting areas across the country at that time.
The minister noted that the high number of informal settlements in the country was due to the lack of a proper housing programme and legislation. As such Rodrigues noted that through the government’s efforts, a majority of these informal settlements were regularised.
“We found over 200 squatter settlements across the length and breadth of Guyana and there is a report to that effect. During the 10 years of the PPP/C from the 90’s to date we have regularised about 175 of those just over 200 communities,” she stated.
However, the minister noted that the establishment of new squatting settlements within the country will not be tolerated by the government.“There are areas that keep popping up around the country sometimes with squatters and we have the unpleasant task of removing those people especially when they’re located in a zero-tolerance area. We have been very clear that we are not tolerating any new squatting so if a new area was to popup overnight somewhere across the country that area would not be regularised because we really need to put an end to squatting, squatting is illegal,” she explained.
Moreover, the minister noted that, with the government’s aggressive housing drive which seeks to allocate thousands of house lots to Guyanese citizens across the country, there is no need for persons to engage in squatting.
“With the extensive nature of the housing drive and our target of distributing 50,000 house lots in our first term in office there really is no need for Guyanese to go and squat and live in inhumane conditions without water and electricity and so on,” she stated.
Meanwhile, some 1644 lots in 13 squatting areas in several regions have been regularised, benefitting hundreds of households between 2020 and 2023. For this year alone, eight squatting areas have been earmarked for regularisation in Regions Three and Four, benefitting 479 households.
These areas include 16 lots in Philadelphia Railway, 18 lots in Barnwell Railway, 34 lots in De Willem, and 71 lots in Vergenoegen/Tuschen in Region Three. Meanwhile, 51 lots will be regularised in DeEndragt Railway, 52 Lots in Vigilance/Bladen Hall/Strathspey Railway, 15 lots in Beterverwagting Railway, and 222 lots in Mocha/Arcadia in Region Four.