– Minister Ali
THE Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Housing and Water, continues to place emphasis on the regularisation of squatter settlements across the Administrative Regions, in addition to the aggressive house lot allocation programme.
In so doing, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration is seeking to rectify decades of neglect in the housing sector, which resulted in a squatting scourge inflicted on the people of this country under the previous People’s National Congress (PNC) Administration, Minister with the portfolio, Mr. Irfaan Ali said Wednesday.
He said the current strategy has been adopted to afford citizens legal claim to their properties.
Ali highlighted the progress in regularising at Plantation Blathylock, in Blairmont, Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice), which has been a squatting area for more than 30 years.
Approximately 46 families in that community stand to benefit and the result will be improvement in the quality of their lives, he remarked.
“We have been trying, over the last ten years, to complete the regularisation process. There were various difficulties as the land is owned by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and part of their development plan was to utilise that piece,” Ali explained.
He said, after a period of continued consultations with the Ministries of Housing and Agriculture, GuySuCo and the residents, a decision was taken to begin to regularise it.
As to how the exercise is proceeding, Ali reported:“We have completed the block survey and we are now doing the sub-division. We have completed a design layout for the area where we have identified critical infrastructure and investment needed there.”
He said the infrastructure work includes the building of roads and installation of drainage and water systems, all of which is expected to be done by September.
“The entire area could be regularised by the end of the third quarter this year,” Ali offered.

Accepted

About the community’s response, he said there were initial plans to allocate lots to the families in various existing schemes in the region but, after resistance, to that plan, the current procedure was accepted.
“I think the community members are happy now. It was a collaborative effort that saw this process. This is an important area and we are happy it is now completed,” Ali announced.
He recalled that, prior to 1992, the country was without a housing programme and the inability to, legitimately, acquire dwelling units had led to squatting on vacant parcels of land, mainly owned by Government, in many cases, in high risk, environmentally unsafe areas such as the sea defence and other drainage reserves.
Ali said there are, presently, some 216 squatting areas countrywide, many  of them, currently, in varying stages of being upgraded towards the attainment of housing scheme status.
He said 154 of them were put under the regularisation programme and are being transformed into regular housing areas while  the remaining areas are either road reserves, sea defence reserves, other drainage reserves such as the banks of canals and are categorised as zero tolerance areas so they cannot be regularised.
While efforts are being made to halt squatting, Government has assumed its social responsibility by regularising squatting areas that are not in zero tolerance zones, as part of the thrust to improve the living standards of people.