Former Prime Minister and First Vice President, Moses Nagamootoo said that Minister of Housing and Water, Collin Croal has told “blatant lies” that were published in Kaieteur News on Sunday.
Through a Facebook post, Nagamootoo denied the allegation that he received a house lot from the State, as was contended in the publication.
The Kaieteur article stated that several houselots allocated by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) this year, have been placed under review.
It said that among them is the allocation of houselots to Nagamootoo, former Minister of Public Service, Tabitha Sarrabo-Halley and others.
“It would raise eyebrows because under CH&PA rules, one cannot benefit from houselots if that person already owns a property,” the article said. It also quoted Croal as saying that “the two former senior government officials are listed among the persons who applied for their houselots in June and received their approved allocations the following month.”
An extract from the said article also stated “According to Croal, since his assumption of the Ministerial post earlier this month, he was able to critically assess and examine the system for the allocation of houselots. He noted that a number of issues within the CH&PA were brought to his attention. “The system is clearly overwhelmed with requests yet we are finding that some applications that were given priority are new in comparison to others and there are some persons who never got houselots,” Croal explained.”
Nagamootoo in his post said that this is a blatant lie. “As Prime Minister or former Prime Minister I have never applied for a house-lot. Nor did I receive any allocation of a house-lot, as alleged.
The fake news was published on the front page of the Sunday Edition of Kaieteur News… The newspaper carried a detailed report of the fabricated claim, along with photographs of me and Minister Croal. This publication is clearly defamatory, and I demand a prompt retraction of the false claim and report, and an unqualified apology for the malicious attack against me,” Nagamootoo said.
