THE Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA) will this year complete and deliver 200 turn-key (finished) homes, as it seeks to bridge the gap between urban and rural communities.The CHPA’s Chief Development Planner (CDP), Mr Rawle Edinboro, made this disclosure during a recent interaction with the media, when he also spoke about the Authority’s achievements in 2015 and its projections for this year.

“The CHPA’s priority in 2016 is to focus heavily on the whole idea of infrastructural consolidation, or community consolidation. Since we are now part of the Ministry of Communities, we have a clear mandate to embrace community development in a more holistic manner,” he said.

The CHPA will, this year, continue to focus on hinterland housing through the provision of US$3.1M by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“Through the UNDP, provision has been made in our budget for this to commence in 2016, to the tune of US$3.1M,” Edinboro said.

He added that the focus will be on hinterland housing improvement, recognising that there is need to balance what happens on the coast with the historical neglect of development in the hinterland.

With the assistance of the UNDP again, Guyana has commissioned a National Housing Profile Study which aims to garner very important data which will help to provide the evidence needed to revisit Guyana’s national housing policy.

“We have this Housing Profile Study as a major project in 2016, and that is to commence very soon,” the Chief Development Planner said, noting that Guyana, like many other countries, is plagued with issues of data and the like; but with the UNDP’s intervention, such issues will be addressed.

TURN KEY HOMES
The CHPA plans to complete and deliver 200 turn-key (finished) homes in 2016, he disclosed.
Having rated the building of turn-key houses as a success story in 2015, Mr Edinboro said the CHPA will continue its focus in this regard in 2016 with a plan to deliver 200 such houses.
An initiative started between June and December 2015 at Perseverance, East Bank Demerara has seen 28 turn-key houses completed and handed over. Prior to 2015, the Authority was basically focusing on distributing land, but in 2015, it considered the notion that people should have access to a complete house/home, particularly since home owners were experiencing much stress in terms of dealing with the contractors and purchasing materials.

Ideally, the acquisition of turn-key homes has been able to remove the stress experienced by home-owners, as attested to by them.
According to Mr Edinboro, home owners have praised the project, and this has given the Authority the impetus to expand the project.

The Authority is also targeting completion of infrastructural works on a new scheme at Five Miles, Bartica.

“In terms of the national priorities now, this is quite in line with the President’s vision and this government’s vision of Bartica becoming a town; and not only a town, but a green town where we are going to embrace more environmentally-friendly methods of development, the CDP said.

ACHIEVEMENTS
At the end of 2015, the CHPA had disbursed $260M under the Government of Guyana Low Income Settlement Scheme.

A separate programme, referred to as the IDB Low Income Programme, had certain elements which are very important for the housing sector. Under that programme, 400 core houses were completed; 208 subsidies were disbursed at hinterland settlements such as Oronoque, Manawarin and White Water in Region One; and Apoteri, Waterman, Annai and other villages in Region Nine.

At the close of 2015, the CHPA had serviced approximately 8,467 house lots nationally. In addition, the CHPA continued its infrastructural provision programme, in which 285 septic tanks were built as part of a public health initiative for the home-owners.

Meanwhile, under the IDB-funded programme, the issue of training and capacity building was addressed. Training was done in the areas of monitoring and evaluation, management, legal education, accounting, customer relations, and urban development.

The government-funded programme was primarily targeted towards infrastructural upgrade, with road improvement being a major component in 2015.

Major success was scored in terms of the titles for lands, with 4,434 titles being distributed to not only beneficiaries in the traditional schemes, but also under the CHPA’s Squatter Regularisation Programme. This includes the development of asphaltic concrete surfaces in Regions Three, Four, Five and Six.

Between June and December 2015, a total of 251 house lots were allocated, representing a major increase from previous years.

By Shirley Thomas