When Minister of Housing and Water Collin Croal announced his ministry will be refunding the 50 percent down payment to those who paid for a house lot on the pretext that there is no infrastructure he knew this was an act of deception. He also apparently failed to give thought to the fact that those applicants made payments, were given a receipt, and have signed an agreement with the Government of Guyana. Aside from the Government having a legal obligation to honour the agreement the Minister ought to know Guyanese are not necessarily of short memory.
Citizens know many housing allocations during the PPP/C regime were created without infrastructures. New homeowners were given land to build on that had no road, drainage, sewage system, electricity, or water. Many had to make roads, accept not having electricity, water, or a solid waste disposal system unless they provide these for themselves. The situation was normalised to the extent what other societies call slum dwelling we optimistically would call housing schemes. Acknowledgement of the aforesaid is not meant to insult or diminish the ingenuity and determination of a people to persevere in spite of the odds. Rather, it speaks to a disregard by the government to establish basic conditions under which citizens should live.
It is folly to think Guyanese are unaware housing developments/schemes were constructed by the Government of Guyana. For example, Georgetown is home to the North and South Ruimveldt housing schemes; Essequibo to Henrietta and Suddie; and Berbice, Martin Luther King and Vyrman’s Erven schemes. The named schemes were built during the PNC administration. Roads, water, drainage, electricity, solid waste, and recreational facilities were installed before residents moved in and turned their key in the door to a finished house. Shopping centres were also built in some areas.
Guyanese can too remember the PPP’s housing efforts, outside of those built during Cheddie Jagan premiership, it was solely outsourced to private investors and citizens had to fend for themselves. The Coalition Government sought to bring structure to the housing chaos and crisis. Theirs was a plan for new development to have infrastructural installations consistent with acceptable standards in communities/ housing schemes. Though no new communities were built during their term what was evident is their work on infrastructural development (roads, electricity and water) in existing areas that had none, such as Farm and Herstelling on East Bank Demerara. Those who made that 50 percent down-payment had the coalition government continued in office they would have benefitted from such a vision.
It would have been a disgraceful act by the PPP/C to offer a refund. If it is genuinely a case of the government believing persons are more deserving of a fully developed housing scheme, when that was not their main pattern of housing distribution before, better approaches can be utilised. If it is now the new plan to have infrastructural development then those who paid should be given the option of having house lots in other areas where the infrastructures are to be established. Or, those applicants should be allowed the option to go ahead with their plan for building while waiting for the infrastructural development to come.
The arbitrary decision to return money paid in good faith would have been seen as another act of vindictive disenfranchise, a denial of persons’ right to own a piece of the national pie. Public condemnation of Minister Croal’s decision was welcoming. Thankfully it has influenced the Minister to withdraw what was evidently a foolish decision in the first place.
