PERSONS seeking land on lease from the Government must invest or those lands will be repossessed, said President Bharrat Jagdeo, shortly before a meeting at the Guyana International Conference Centre with several groups from various areas who have applied for land.
The President noted with concern the issue where people get a piece of land and want to hold it without carrying out productive activities on it.
“I want to meet with these groups to ensure that they are actually using the land for development purposes,” he said. He noted that in Lethem, there is huge demand there and in the surrounding areas “and so we will have to be very careful.”
He said that the last time he met with a group from Lethem he told them that they will be giving people who live in Lethem first preference; and secondly, Guyanese businesses who want to expand their operations and sell into Brazil. The President noted that services and transport depot, hotel services, they will also get plots of land.
“Then we will move, once we satisfy that demand, to other people who may want to import, build their warehouse here and then export to Brazil. So we’ve seen development; already some construction is going on. I want to see that the process is developed orderly,” Jagdeo stressed.
The President said that stemming from the Cabinet outreach at Linden, a number of persons from Fair’s Rust, Yarrowkabra and Moblissa had land issues, which he said would have been resolved at the meeting yesterday.
“I just don’t want people to take large tracts of land and sit on them and not do anything. So we want to make sure that they know that if they don’t move forward with the project, they could have the land repossessed,” he stressed.
He said people would take advantage of the court process that could drag on for years to resolve a land matter. President Jagdeo cited the example of Giftland Office Max which is to construct a mall in the vicinity of Liliendaal. He said that the mall should have been completed by now since the investor indicated to Government that he had the capital and was about ready to move forward with the investment.
“We gave the lease and a couple of years have passed and now we are getting all kinds of excuses [for the mall not being built],” the President said. “But now to go and repossess that or cancel the lease will put us through a nightmare scenario. So this sort of thing we need to avoid,” he said.