MINISTER of Housing and Water, Mr. Irfaan Ali, Friday met with squatters of the Industrial Backlands in Ruimveldt, Georgetown, called ‘John Fernandes Drive’ and promised that an assessment of the entire area will be carried out to determine the way forward.
The minister, along with the Director of Settlements Regularization and Upgrading Department, Mr. Gladwin Charles, met with the squatters of the area which have approximately 52 houses with persons living there since 1983.
“I am here more today to listen to your issues. The whole issue of squatting and regularisation in this area has been a long and outstanding issue, and I know you have made several attempts to engage Government and other persons in having this issue resolved,” he stated.
He said the Government believes strongly that people’s involvement in decision-making and resolving problem is critical, adding, “We believe strongly that when we have consensus or when we have dialogue with each other, we can have the best solution for our community problems.”
Ali urged the residents to separate individual issues and work towards the community issues, because “We can’t resolve the issues here in terms of regularisation from an individual perspective”.
He cited that the Railway Embankment and Stanleytown drainage reserve as recent examples where there was successful engagement and interaction with the community in bringing “a long term solution for the people.”
“In making the decision or in outlining your own problems, some critical things must be paramount or must be very important – that is your health, well-being, and living conditions,” he insisted.
“These are critical things for us, because whatever decision we take must not in any way compromise the health of yourself or your children – we all strive to have improvement in our lives, we all strive to have betterment and all of us would have struggled and we want our children, our grandchildren to have better lives than we have, ” he observed.

He warned that regularisations can have some consequences, since some persons are on ‘zero tolerance’ zones, such as main drainage reserves and other things.
He said, “One of the challenges we have in this area is that there are various owners of various plots of land, some transported ownership is in private entity name, and some is in Government name,” he stated.
After listening to the concerns by the residents, Minister Ali decided that a conditional assessment of the area will be done, an approach to which the residents readily agreed.
He said an assessment of the area will be done, first of all, to verify ownership, and ensure that all the minimum standards are met in terms of regularisation.

Minister Ali explained that if the area is not regularized, then it becomes difficult for the administration to bring infrastructure, like roads, electricity and water.

Against this backdrop, he reminded that the Government is building more than 1,000 community roads across the country at this moment.

One resident expressing appreciation to the Minister for visiting the community, said, “We are here to ask you for that commitment or if you can grant us help in terms of regularisation – that is the main issue around here”.
Another resident assured that the houses are situated in an organised manner.
It was disclosed that the majority of persons have electricity supply, and there were complaints about the dust and the area being swampy and muddy when it rains.