‘The ministry’s objective is to develop, process and allocate in excess of 17,000 house lots by December 2010’ – Housing Minister Irfaan Ali
THE Ministry of Housing and Water will take its continuing ‘One Stop Shop’ countrywide programme to Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) today.

The one-day outreach will be conducted at Blairmont Community Centre, West Bank Berbice, from 09:00h.

The recently started and highly successful exercise aims at decentralising the Ministry services across the ten Administrative Regions of Guyana.

This initiative involves setting up a replica of the Ministry in each region to deal with relevant issues, including processing agreements of sale; processing and distributing titles and transports; allocation of house lots, as well as general housing matters, such as squatting.

Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) representatives will also be at Blairmont to attend to customers complaints, bill queries and leak reports and lending agencies would advise on how to access their resources.

Inaugurated in Region Three (West Demerara/Essequibo Islands), the drive has since continued in Regions Six (East Berbice/Corentyne), Four (Demerara/Mahaica) and Ten (Upper Demerara/Berbice).

Minister of Housing and Water, Mr. Irfaan Ali said, so far, 4,300 transactions have been processed through the ‘One Stop Shop’ in different regions.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), Ms. Myrna Pitt said, together with the Ministry, they are looking to allocate lands available primarily in Block ‘D’ Bath area.

“The exercise has been tremendous. We just came back from Linden and we had a huge turnout there. We also had huge turnouts in the other regions,” she reported.

Pitt said: “So far, it has been successful taking the services to the people. It enables you to conclude transactions in real time almost and some issues you can deal with on the spot.”

“It is always a fruitful and worthwhile exercise, that direct interface with customers because, sometimes, persons might not have been able to come down to you. So when you go out there, having direct contact and interfacing, it kind of eases some of the burdens on some of the people. It has been a very worthwhile exercise so far,” she offered.

The Ministry’s objective is to develop, process and allocate in excess of 17,000 house lots by December 2010 and the focus will be on every area where there is a demand including Regions Two (Pomeroon/Supenaam), Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Ten, Ali said.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, he said the Ministry is aiming to allocate in excess of 250 lots during the visit today.

COMPLETED
He said, up to now, since 2005, the Ministry has completed infrastructure works costing $410M in Region Five, which included the Hope (Venezuela) scheme, Ketting, Waterloo, Experiment and Bath, to the benefit of 11,632 people on 2,068 lots.

“Right now we have, ongoing, the construction of roads, drains and structures in Burma at the contracted value of $23M which is 10 per cent completed and that area has 85 lots,” Ali stated.

He said other undertakings in the pipeline are building of roads; excavating drains; erecting structures and installing pure water distribution systems and electricity at Bath, Phase III.

“That is slated for design work this year and, to commence physical development in 2010, we are looking to spend approximately $170M,” Ali disclosed.

In the water sector, he said the investment portfolio for supply in Region Five is estimated at nearly $600M with 30,000 beneficiaries.

Ali said the key investment is on constructing a water treatment plant at Cotton Tree, where it will provide service to about 15,000 consumers living between Shieldstown and Number Seven.

“The strategy behind this investment is not to simply construct the water treatment plant but to ensure that the entire system is rehabilitated, thus creating conditions sufficient for the achievement of project objectives,” he pointed out.

He added that, among these projects are a new $40M borehole at Cotton Tree, a $63M transmission main from Number Seven to Cotton Tree and the Number Seven to Shieldstown distribution rehabilitation project valued at some $76M.

“These projects are apace to coincide with the commissioning of the Cotton Tree water treatment plant,” Ali assured.

He said major works are also planned in the DeHoop area with a new $50M borehole to be constructed and an $11M transmission main being laid.