THE Ministry of Housing and Water, in 2014, was able to complete 170 projects utilising $6.27B in making housing more accessible and affordable to the Guyanese people.

Minister of Housing and Water, Mr Irfaan Ali, said the ministry has been able to achieve full expenditure of their 2014 budgetary allocation by the end of November 2014. The minister explained that in 2009, some $1.46B was invested in the sector, while in 2014 the budgetary allocation was $6.27B.
Ali noted that over the past six years the budgetary allocations for the Housing sector have grown by 430% from 2009.
He emphasised that his ministry was able to expand its yearly budgetary allocation and achieve full expenditure by the end of November 2014.
According to the minister, in 2011 and 2012, the ministry was able to acquire over 1000 acres of land and will be seeking an increase in 2015.

“With over 1000 acres of land acquired during 2011 and 2012, the ministry was able to aggressively pursue the development of new housing areas over the last four years. We again will be seeking [a] 47% increase in our budgetary allocation proposal in 2015.”

The Community Roads Improvement Programme (CRIP) is a multi-million-dollar road project being implemented by the Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development and the Ministry of Housing and Water. It is aimed at improving access to housing, education, health and other social infrastructure through the improvement and upgrading of roads in existing housing schemes.

Residents in Regions 3, 4, 5 and 6 benefited from quality roads which were rehabilitated under the CRIP, in which $417 million was injected in 2014. “Under the CRIP programme, we are focusing more on old housing schemes, old settlements and old areas, because these are areas that also required infrastructure intervention,” the minister said during a press conference in May 2014.

Explaining further the works completed by the ministry, Ali noted that in “2009 we expended $1.4 B where we had 51 projects and constructed some 54.9km of roads.” He related too that some 4,400 housing lots were distributed with almost 18,000 beneficiaries. The ministry during these projects created 1,275 jobs directly.

In 2010, the expenditure was $3.17B, where “we did double the amount of roads some 106.3Km and 6,382 new lots with beneficiaries of more than 26,000 persons creating 1475 jobs,” he said. These figures and works done by the ministry, Minister Ali stressed, continues notwithstanding the challenges.

The ministry has almost tripled the rate of construction in upgrading roads from 54.9km in 2009 to 155km in 2014. The further increase of 224km is expected by the end of 2015. Over the past two years, the ministry has focused on the upgrading of major access roads within the different communities to asphalted concrete.

“We have completed 170 projects in 2014 and a further 120 are planned in the future. In 2015, there are some special projects for the ministry of housing that would improve access, create new opportunities and expand the infrastructure landscape of our country,” Minister Ali concluded.