Roads to be upgraded for regularised Blueberry Hill residents

…persons receive Agreements of Sale for lands

Regularised areas of Blueberry Hill (North) in Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) have been identified for road upgrades, a project that will benefit scores of residents.
Minister within the Housing Ministry, Susan Rodrigues was accompanied by the technical staff of Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA) on Thursday as she conducted a visit to several sites.
The area encompasses approximately 150 lots, with some of them being occupied by informal settlers for more than two decades.

Regularisation in Blueberry Hill was delayed as a result of ownership issues and corrections being made to the plan, as more persons started to occupy the area. On Thursday, the Housing Ministry also held an Agreement of Sale processing exercise to allow the residents to receive legal ownership for their house lots.
Following the site visit, Minister Rodrigues said the engineers are now tasked with completing the road designs to move forward with construction of the roads.
“We want to ensure that the residents here can live in a community that has a proper road network as in our other housing schemes,” Rodrigues outlined.
The Housing and Water Ministry has been actively working to regularise squatters. Seven new settlements were regularised last year.
Since September of last year, Minister Croal had said that no new squatting areas would be recognised by the Housing and Water Ministry, as efforts move apace to issue titles for some of the current areas where this is an issue.
The Housing Minister had said that efforts to distribute titles continue even as the Ministry continues to allocate house lots. Pursuing a robust housing campaign, he had said, would ensure that there is no need for squatting.
Through the Housing and Water, Public Works and Local Government and Regional Development Ministries, more than 1100 internal access roads in communities across the country will also be upgraded to concrete and asphaltic concrete over the coming months.
As part of transparency and accountability measures, the projects will be monitored with assistance from the respective NDCs. Maps of the areas and copies of the contracts will be given to each NDC and residents will be able to visit the NDCs to receive information on the scope of works for projects in that particular area. (G12)