THE Ministry of Housing and Water, in its continuing efforts to improve its services, has embarked on a process to interview ‘backlog applicants’ for 2008.

The procedure kicked off Saturday at the ministry on Brickdam, Georgetown, and Land Development and Administration Manager, Ms. Denise King-Tudor, in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, said the system has over 5000 applications for persons who would have applied in 2008.

A staff of the Ministry of Housing and Water interviews an applicant Saturday.

“We have decided to interview what we will call the backlog applicants. We have a number of persons on our data base and we have not interviewed them; we have commenced that process today,” she explained.

She said this process will continue for over the next six weekends, Saturdays from 9:00 h to 17:00 h, and Sundays 9:00 h to 13:00 h.

However, King-Tudor noted the ministry would not have been working yesterday, as it was Father’s Day.

“It is basically all the applicants that we have on the system for Region Four (Demerara/Mahaica); and when we are through with the applicants in this region, we will then move to those from Region Three (Essequibo Islands/West Demerara),” she disclosed.

She added, “We will go there and work along with the regional housing office and have those persons interviewed.”

King-Tudor insisted this process is very important, with the recent commencement of the ministry’s automated application system where applicants are interviewed immediately upon submitting their application.

“Of course you must provide us with all the requisite documents for interviews to be done,” she pointed out.

Since the introduction of this system last May, with the previous and current applicants, large numbers of applicants have to be dealt with on a daily basis.

Minister of Housing and Water, Mr. Irfaan Ali, stressed that the exercise is basically to interview applicants since there is a large backlog in the system for the amount of persons still to be interviewed.

“We want to bring the number of persons interviewed down by the end of August,” Minister Ali announced.

“Then all they will be waiting for is an allocation of land,” the Housing and Water Minister emphasised.

Ali said this activity is part of the ministry’s drive to improve efficiency, timeliness, reliability and responsiveness.

Also, he stressed that this is in conjunction with the automated and online system noting, “So at the end of August everybody will basically be waiting on an allocation.”

At present, the ministry and the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) have embarked on a programme to de-centralise its services throughout the regions.