A disagreement has emerged over the management of Guyana’s national housing programme, which currently faces a backlog of more than 78,000 applicants awaiting house lot allocations. Minister of Housing and Water Collin Croal and former Housing Minister Annette Ferguson, who oversaw housing during her tenure in government, have taken sharply contrasting positions on the scale, transparency, and fairness of the programme.
Minister Croal, speaking in a Facebook post, said Region Four remains the most challenging, with over 52,000 pending applications, driven by the population’s proximity to economic and employment opportunities near Georgetown. He pledged to clear backlogs in all other regions while steadily reducing demand in the capital-adjacent region. To address the issue, Croal said the government is collaborating with state agencies including the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), the Guyana Sugar Corporation, and in Region Five, the Mahaica-Mahaicony-Abary Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA).
“The strategy is to achieve 100% clearance of pending applicants in all regions except Region Four, where we will steadily work to cut down the huge demand,” Croal said.
However, Ferguson, sharply criticised the government’s approach, calling it reactive and lacking in transparency. According to her the minister’s statements demandsdeeper scrutiny, as it exposes not only the scale of Guyana’s housing challenges but also a troubling absence of policy clarity, transparency, and equity under the current administration.
The former minister argued that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government’s housing promises during the last election campaign—specifically, the construction of 40,000 houses—now appear more rhetorical than realistic. Ferguson expressed concern that only now is the Ministry engaging agencies to release lands, calling the timing a “fundamental lack of preparedness.”
Ferguson also criticised the absence of context and detailed data: “Minister Collin Croal is yet to inform the nation how many applications were received between 2020 and 2025, disaggregated by year and by region. Equally absent is demographic data: the number of single women applicants, married couples, and young Guyanese who applied at the eligible age of 21 and are now years, if not decades, older, still waiting. Without such disaggregation, the public cannot assess equity, fairness, or administrative efficiency.”
Highlighting contrasts with previous government practices, Ferguson recalled that the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition government (2015-2025), which she served under, inherited approximately 60,000 pending applications, some dating back to 1997. She said the policy response at the time was “clear and deliberate: applications were addressed in a fair, systematic, and transparent manner, with efforts made to regularize backlogs while restoring public confidence in the allocation process.”
Ferguson warned that the current approach risks deepening inequality. “The concentration of over 52,000 applications in Region Four is not accidental. Yet the Minister’s declaration that all other regions will achieve 100% clearance while Region Four’s backlog will merely be ‘reduced’ signals resignation to inequality rather than a credible plan to resolve it,” she said.
She further criticised the apparent commercialization of housing schemes, with lands intended for modest homes increasingly dominated by apartment complexes and luxury developments. “Teachers, nurses, public servants, single mothers, and young families remain on waiting lists without so much as a phone call. This raises profound ethical and governance questions about who the housing programme truly serves,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson concluded with a call for transparency and equity: “Housing is a social good and a developmental necessity, not merely a commercial commodity. If the government is serious about addressing the housing crisis, it must move beyond vague figures and political promises and present a transparent, data-driven, and equitable national housing policy. Anything less will continue to erode public trust and leave thousands of Guyanese waiting in frustration.”
