The PPP’s announcement of successfully distributing their goal of 50,000 house lots and facilitating the building of houses, invoke post-WWII efforts to provide habitation for the poor. Sugar workers and the urban poor were still living in “logies/ranges” that were more decrepit than the stables for mules, as Chairman of Bookers, Jack Campbell, observed.
Following Caribbean labour protests, the Moyne Commission was taking evidence in British Guiana in 1939, when five sugar workers were shot and killed at Plantation Leonora. Political and social recommendations made by the Commission were to be implemented after WWII. A Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund (SILWF), sourced from a levy on exported sugar, was established in 1947 to rehouse sugar workers from logies in “Extra Nuclear Housing Areas” (ENHA). It was not altruism, since the “cut and drop” system for harvesting cane, was changed the following year to “cut and load”. This precipitated the 1948 Enmore protests, massacre and martyrdom we are commemorating – since the effective reduction of workers’ wages exceeded the levy to build their houses.
The number of ranges/logies in the various estates were as follows: Skeldon 49; Port Morant 95; Albion 67; Rose Hall (Canje) 132; Providence (EBB) 2; Blairmont 39; Bath 21; Enmore/Non Pariel 70; Lusignan 101; LBI 71; Ogle 35; Ruimveldt 17; Houston 23; Farm/Diamond 194; Wales 54; Versailles 52; Leonora 80; Uitvlugt 145. By 1971, there were only 17 logies standing at Port Morant and 13 at Leonora. Between 1951 and 1964, some 10,785 lots were allocated and the same number of houses built: then the most successful housing drive in British Caribbean history.
The loans were approximately BWI$1200 (US$480) to cater for lumber, gutters, carpenters fees, paint and painters fees for a house approximately 24’x20’ with a 12’x10’ kitchen. The lots were leased and the loans were to be repaid at a rate of $2 weekly, deducted from wages. By 1947, most African Guyanese sugar workers had left the logies and were the overwhelming majority of the skilled and better paid factory workers. Using my village of Uitvlugt an example, after Abolition, the land adjoining the Public Road had been purchased as individual lots forming “the Village”. Directly southwest on the Estate Rd was one large “Barrack/Garrison”, housing a number of African and Indian Guyanese families who were all housed in new “cottages” built from the SILWF Funds.
1929 West Indians had been brought between 1920-1928 to work on the sugar plantations from the smaller Islands. Several “cottages” housed a number of them in “Bajan Quarters” at Uitvlugt near logies adjoining the sugar factory (“Letter A”). The “Bajans” and other workers – both African and Indian, were granted SILWF loans to build houses in vacant sections behind the Village. Two older inhabited sections were regularized with SILWF loans for building additional houses were extended. In all 288 lots were allocated and the same number of homes built.
Residents of ‘Letter “A”’ logies- all Indians including my parents- were allocated 226 house lots along with the loans for building houses in the cleared land between the Public Road and the Atlantic Ocean – once the Provision Grounds of the slaves and grandly named “Ocean View”. Residents from other logies around the sugar factory were relocated to ENHA lots created in the western, contiguous villages of Zeeburg (94), De Willem (167), E. Meten meer Zorg (151), W Meten meer Zorg (194); Zeelugt (164) and eventually Tuschen (80).
But it was not only sugar workers who were aided. In 1946, the government launched a “Central Authority” – to provide housing for the “working class” in Georgetown – which was superseded by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA) in 1948. Financing was provided from the British Guiana Building Society Ltd, (est. 1929) and incorporated in 1940 as the New Building Society. In 1954, the Housing Dept. was created and a vigorous housebuilding programme commenced, with G$15 million spent between 1954 and 1964, producing some 3,900 houses.
After independence, the PNC’s1972-76 “Feed, Clothe and House the Nation” plan called for building 65,000 “housing units”, but only one-tenth of that was realized. According to Carl Greenidge, “Some 31 subsidized, low-cost housing schemes were initiated between 1970 and 1980…The estimated costs were some $500M. In addition…several housing schemes, including North Ruimveldt, Meadow Brook, and Lodge Backlands, were developed by the CH&PA.” There were also several schemes in rural areas for PNC supporters, such as De Kendren, Crane and Wisroc.
The present housing drive, said to be ethnically and gender equitable, dwarfs all previous initiatives.
