Newly sworn-in Housing Minister meets Cane Grove residents
ALMOST immediately after being reappointed Minister of Housing and Water, its business as usual for Minister Irfaan Ali, who continues to aggressively pursue the programmes as set out for the Housing and Water sectors. According to Ali, one of the primary aims in moving forward is the regularisation of existing squatter settlements across the country.
With this in mind, the minister yesterday met with scores of residents from the Estate/ Coconut Dam area in Cane Grove, on the East Coast of Demerara, to discuss the process towards the regularisation of the area.
During the interactive session, conducted in the office of the Neighborhood Democratic Council (NDC), Minister Ali explained that the process of regularising the area will be done in several stages, with the agreement of all involved.
He explained, “One of the difficulties in this area is that since the last occupational survey was done by Lands and Surveys, a lot of people have constructed homes on the land, and now have to complete a new occupational survey.”
After this process, ministry officials will move towards establishing property lines or towards conducting a cadastral survey. The entire process will take six weeks.
He urged the residents to work together to overcome the hurdles that will inevitably arise during this process, so that they can be issued titles in a timely manner.
He said, “The people of the community must sign on to that survey before we can move on to a scenario where we will be able to look at allocations and move to titling… there will be those who do not fit into the cadastral plan, this is the reality; there will be persons who will have to be relocated, owing to the unstructured way they previously occupied the land.”
As a result, the minister announced that an area will then have to be identified to relocate those who will be displaced; this too will be done in collaboration with the community members.
He reminded those present that the focus of the ministry continues to be on community development and planning, which is being realised though the regularisation of squatter settlements across the country.
As to the importance of community participation in the process of development, he said, “We want to explore, with members of the community, how they can move forward together; we want to move quickly towards orienting the area into a planned community and we believe that your participation in the process is critical, as you are the key stakeholders and you must play the most pivotal and key role as we come to a consensus and compromise.”
After Minister Ali’s address, those assembled all agreed to the initiation the first stages of the regularisation process, and pledged to work together so that it can be completed as quickly as possible; while others were given three days to submit their suggestions to the NDC Office.
During the meeting yesterday, Minister Ali was joined by representatives from the Ministry of Housing and from Lands and Surveys Department, who will be working together to complete the regularisation process.