Undoubtedly, the government’s housing programme has been a grand success, with scores of new housing schemes established across Guyana, and hundreds of thousands of people realising that dream of owning their homes, particularly people from the poorer sections of the population. However, one aspect of the government’s housing policy and programmes which has been as equally outstanding as the distribution of house lots and development of new housing schemes has been the regularisation of squatter settlements.
The government’s policy as regards squatter settlements has been a humane one, because, instead of demolishing squatter settlements, the government has been working assiduously towards regularising them as far as possible. As such, 170 of the total of 216 squatter settlements identified by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) have so far been regularised.
The remaining squatter settlements are either on roads, sea defences, or other drainage reserves such as the banks of canals; areas which are categorised as zero tolerance areas in that they cannot be regularised, the housing and water minister declared.
The minister disclosed that residents in Linden are soon to benefit from the regularisation process, and will receive titles to their properties.
“We have (advanced) this process to the extent that we have now completed the survey for most of the lots; and in another two to four weeks, we will have titles distributed to most of these persons who have been living in those areas for 40 to 50 years without titles,” he explained.
Minister Ali said: “The areas in Region Ten which are to be beneficiaries of the regularisation process include Ituni; Parcels 95 to 139, Block ‘F’, Plantation Wismar/West Watooka; Parcels 90 to 94, Block ‘F’, Wismar; Blocks E & F, Canvas City; Green Valley; Block 22 Linden, and Blue Berry Hill.
This amounts to a total of 1,218 government-owned lots which are being regularised by CH&PA, Housing and Water Minister Irfaan Ali disclosed.
It will be recalled that, under the previous government, squatter settlements were bulldozed. One such notable incident was at Bath, West Coast Berbice in the late 1970s. It is alleged that a regional minister resigned as a result of that incident.
What is ironic about that situation is that squatting became widespread because of the very policies of the then government, and its inability to formulate and implement sound housing policies and programmes. In its 1972-1976 development plan, crafted under the slogan ‘Feed, Clothe and House the nation’ (FCH), the government undertook to build 65,000 housing units; but at the end of that period, only 13,000 were built. To exacerbate the situation, a few years thereafter, the Housing Ministry was scrapped and no further housing policy or programme was crafted. Consequently, the housing shortage became acute. Moreover, because of the rapid decline of the national economy, the price of housing materials skyrocketed, and only the rich could have afforded to build houses.
The working class was therefore virtually forced to resort to squatting, with the consequence that squatter settlements sprang up everywhere in the country.
It was after this government assumed office in 1992 that the housing situation began reversing; and today, whether or not we like this government, we all have to concede that it has done a remarkably unprecedented job with respect to housing development.