…of housing development
They say “a new broom sweeps clean”. But like all analogies it does have its limitations – after all, they also say “an old broom knows all the corners”!! The PPP’d placed housing at the top of their agenda. Their reasoning was simple. A person with a home, not only has pride of ownership and a tangible affirmation of his being “somebody”; he also has a reason to keep a stable job to pay the mortgage!
The PPP duly gave out at least 80,000+ houselots and introduced a raft of measures to assist the awardees to build their houses. Low interest rates by NBS, tax writeoffs for mortgage interests, steady economic growth ensuring jobs and income to service mortgage payments, etc. All of this ensured houses went up like mushrooms across Guyana – and helped to trigger a virtuous circle of heightened economic activity.
The PPP’s latest scheme was to build 1000 “turn-key” houses that was within the budget of the poorer family. Only a couple of hundred were built before the government was changed. And here is where the new broom started to sweep all that had preceded into the garbage. The newly honoured, PNC warhorse and departing Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green was placed in charge of the CHPA and he immediately scrapped the “turn key” project and the focus on single-family houses. He would be spending billion to create duplexes, condos, and apartment buildings as the core of the PNC-led coalition’s housing drive.
Not surprisingly, former Minister of Housing Irfaan Ali called the proposal “cockeyed” and not reflective of Guyanese needs and opportunities. Your Eyewitness will be blunter: the plan is plain idiocy. In a country with one of the lowest population density on planet earth, why would you want to pack poor people into cages stacked on top of each other? Haven’t we learnt anything from the experience of the “projects” in Brooklyn and the Bronx from our relatives in NY? And if the “turn-key” houses were poorly built, with our skill level, what guarantee do we have on the duplexes they’re starting with??
But the mystery’s now been cleared. Junior Communities Minister Valerie Patterson, in extolling the performance of the PNC back in the day when it had promised to “Feed, Clothe and House” the nation, released some interesting facts. Said she: “It was under the PNC that communities such as Tucber, Tucville, Amelia’s Ward, North and South Ruimveldt, Festival City, Roxanne Burnham Gardens, Melanie Damishana, Stevedore Scheme, the Wismar-Rockstone Housing Project, Dazzell Housing Scheme, and many other were developed.”
Did you notice the houses were only in the PNC’s strongholds?
The more things change…
…and the popular vote
Back in the 60s when Comrade Cheddi’s equivocation on the “communist question” placed his job on the line, the US and UK eased him out by supporting the PNC’s argument that the popular vote was a truer reflection of the “will of the people” than the “first-past-the-post” (FPTP) system. In the latter, whoever won the majority of constituencies won the election. But some constituencies had more voters than others and cumulatively, the number of seats won by the losing PNC was never reflected by its popular vote.
So the US twisted the UK’s arms and the latter changed our system to PR and the rest is history. A very sordid history if the truth be told! Well, they do say “payback’s a bi*ch”!! And it’s payback time in the USA! Turns out the establishment’s worst nightmare, Donald Trump, won the election even though Clinton received more than two million more votes than him!!
So are they going to change the “Electoral College”, which can work like the FPTP??
…of the high
The Police just burnt $147 million worth of marijuana at the Princes Street incinerator. Did they figure out the reason why all of Albouystown are smiling this morning?
Who said the Police aren’t humane?
