– Ferguson says challenges acquiring State lands prevented greater reduction
Former Minister within the Ministry of Communities, Annette Ferguson said on Thursday that when the APNU+AFC took up Office in 2015 it met an almost 30,000 backlog of applications for housing and land and it reduced this by over 7,400 by 2020.
At an APNU+AFC media conference, Ferguson said that a total of 7,089 house lots were provided between June 2015 to May 2020 and 351 housing units were distributed in schemes located at Prospect, Perseverance, Onderneeming, Experiment, Amelia’s Ward and elsewhere.
Questioned what prevented the clearing of a larger portion of the backlog, Ferguson pointed to the challenges associated with acquiring State lands from the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (GUYSUCO) and the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission (GLSC).
However, at the time that the APNU+AFC demitted Office, she said that the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) had acquired lands in Amelia’s Ward in Region Ten; a portion of land at Meten-Meer-Zorg from GuySuCo and was still engaging NICL regarding acquiring additional lands.
The former Minister said that when the APNU+AFC took up office it realised that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) had created a number of the land challenges the CH&PA now faces.
“When we came to Government, many of the lands on the East Bank of Demerara were actually given out to private developers who were allocated acres of land under the PPP/C Administration and the intent was to ensure that those developers construct homes that Guyanese can benefit from but, when we came into Government, many of the lands out at the East Bank of Demerara, those lands, if you drive there now, you will not see not one housing unit,” she said.
In answering further questions, Furguson said that the former Coalition Government was also able to repossess lands at Providence Phase Three and the PPP/C has already begun to issue out lands in this area as a result of these efforts.
