— amendments to be made to Condominium Act this year

FAILURE to amend the Condominium Act to include duplexes has resulted in further suffering for Guyanese who purchased such properties under the Coalition Government since insurance, title, or collateral value cannot be derived from such properties.
This was revealed by Minister of Housing and Water, Collin Croal, on Friday during the Budget Debates in the National Assembly.
Noting that dozens of duplexes built by the Coalition lack the legislative support they need, Minister Croal said between 2010 and 2015, 22,964 houses were given out to Guyanese under the PPP/C Government.

“The fact is, Mr. Speaker, even when the Coalition had one big idea for housing, even that they could not get right! Their big idea? Let’s introduce duplexes! And they proceeded to have contractors construct duplexes but did not think to have the Condominium Act amended to include this type of house,” Minister Croal explained.
He added: “The result is, those citizens who invested their hard-earned dollars into those houses cannot get insurance or titles and even more worrying is that banks are not amenable to holding duplexes as collateral! How could any Minister of Housing with an ounce of sense allow this to happen?”
Further, he said under the Coalition, only 7,534 house lots were handed out during their term with 2,000 alone “being for elections gimmick and the period when they were illegally clinging to power”.
By mid of this year, he underscored that Minister of Legal Affairs, Minister Anil Nandalall will be bringing legislation to amend the Condominium Act to allow banks to accept titles for those houses, insurance companies to issue policies to those homeowners, and, more importantly, allow the homeowners to access loans, for expansion.

Because of these and many other failures of the Coalition Government, in Housing and Water sector, along with other sectors, Minister Croal said housing has received a total allocation of $8.9 Billion of which $6 billion is for infrastructure and utility works in new and existing areas, “all aiding in advancing our commitment of allocating a minimum of 50,000 house lots to citizens within our first term”.
This year, 2021 alone, he said the Government intends to allocate over 10,000 house lots and 7,000 land titles to citizens, many of whom have been waiting for years to own their homes.

“Let the House be reminded that in just four months in office, 3,600 house lots and 413 titles were handed over to citizens. This year, we will also build 1,000 homes for low-income earners and young professionals and residents of Region 10 will also benefit from the construction of 1,000 homes through public–private partnerships, with community involvement in every step of the way,” he said.
Over these five years, Minister Croal said citizens will benefit from the construction of new roads, bridges, water, and electrical distribution networks, and improved drainage in all 10 regions.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS
He explained that new developments including the construction of roads, bridges, drainage, water, and electrical distribution networks will be undertaken to complete infrastructure development works in most regions.
“Our 2021 National Housing Development Programme will include the construction of 1,000 low-income and Young Professional Housing Units in Region Four – Cummings Lodge, Prospect, Providence, Little Diamond, and Great Diamond; in Region Three – Onderneeming and Wales; Region Six — Ordinance/Fortlands, Hampshire and Williamsburg; and Region 10– Amelia’s Ward,” the Housing Minister said.

He added: “Mr. Speaker the Hinterland and Amerindian communities are no exception. The record of the PPP/C with respect to their development speaks for itself. In the area of housing we will therefore commence the construction of 100 homes this year for hinterland communities,” he said.
He explained that Government will continue the road construction to complete the access from Great Diamond to Mandela with the construction of the four-lane highway and heavy-duty bridges from Mandela Avenue to Eccles as well as the heavy-duty access bridge at Mocha Arcadia, East Bank Demerara.
“Mr. Speaker, in addition to other users from the East Bank, West Coast and West Bank, in excess of 20,000 residents will directly benefit from the new access road and 100,000 indirectly. Persons will now have a choice of access which they didn’t have before,” he said.

Not only is the Government providing affordable housing in sustainable and well-developed communities but Minister Croal said private-sector partners also contribute to the housing drive.
“And so to ease the burden of high construction materials cost, we have removed VAT from locally produced building and construction materials including sand, stone, concrete blocks, plywood, logs, and lumber. This means Mr. Speaker that those persons who are house lot beneficiaries can look forward to paying cheaper prices for building materials,” the Housing Minister said.

SINGLE WINDOW APPROVAL SYSTEM
Additionally, he noted that Government will soon implement a Single Window approval system for the Planning Permission Process which will greatly reduce processing time. “It is no secret Mr. Speaker, that the process to obtain a Planning Permit is painstaking, frustrating, and really a headache. Potential business owners are saddled with the responsibility of running back and forth to a number of Government agencies, including the Guyana Fire Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and many others just to check the status of their permit. The PPP/C Government has promised to improve the ease of doing business and so bottlenecks like I’ve described will negatively affect this goal of ours,” Minister Coral said.

He said the Planning Permute Process will be reorganised and recalibrated to be more efficient and ultimately more effective.
“My ministry will ensure that the necessary investments are made to enhance, strengthen and modernise the capacity of the staff and the technology used in the process. I’m happy to report that we have already begun the preliminary work to revamp the process. During the next few weeks, all local democratic organs will be provided with a detailed list of documents that must be submitted and a revised Building Application Form. These two measures alone will significantly reduce the processing time,” he explained.

Noting that the priority of making life easier for citizens is not limited to house lot allottees, Minister Croal said that, for the first time, homeowners will now get extra monies because the low-income mortgage ceiling was raised to $12M at Commercial Banks and $15M at the New Building Society.
This intervention, he said, was highly anticipated by homeowners as it means that their interest rates will be lower and that other commercial banks will now have to become more competitive. “This also means that citizens will now be able to access higher loans and it follows that they can now do more on their houses, their monthly installments will be reduced as a result of lower rates and, overall, citizens will be the winners,” Minister Croal said.

In the water sector, the minister noted that GWI was on the verge of a financial collapse despite the steep tariff increases by the previous Government. It had a significant operating loss of $1.1billion.“So dire was its situation that it had to rely on bank overdraft facilities to finance its operations. Sadly, but predictably for the Coalition strategies, overdrafts totaling $270million did nothing to alleviate its losses,” he added.
Highlighting some of the issues, Minister Croal said employment costs had skyrocketed since 2015, rental of buildings, and debt plagued the entity. In August 2020, GWI debt to suppliers totaled $783M.

“And even worse, over 5,000 customers were denied service connections because basic inventory levels of service connection materials that are required to provide a service had deteriorated. Also, in August 2020, the new management inherited over 8,000 water leaks which had been ignored for the period 2015 to August 2020,” he said. But there’s good news. The Housing Minister said under the stewardship of CEO Shaik Baksh, GWI has collected 5.3 billion dollars in revenue, an increase of 1 billion dollars over 2019 and this during COVID.
“Its debt is reduced, it did not access its overdraft facility, and overall its financial situation has improved. And this has happened in less than seven months and without burdening our pensioners,” he added.