Although allocating more than 53,000 house lots over the past five years, the Ministry of Housing and the Central Housing and Planning Authority are still facing a backlog of more than 70,000 applications.

About 71% of the existing applications are for house lots in Region Four.

In a statement on Saturday, Minister of Housing, Collin Croal, said several state agencies will be engaged for the purchasing of lands to meet the demand that still exists.

“We are continuously working to find land and to engage with our partners, in terms of, the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, NICIL, GUYSUCO, and in Region 5 case, MMA, to be able to acquire additional lands to address these backlogs”, Croal said.

The Minister explained that the backlog in all of the Regions, except for Region 4, are expected to be cleared. He said with the most applications coming in for Region 4, greater emphasis will be placed on acquiring lands in that Region to meet the demand.

“We are committing yes, if you are living in the other Regions, 100% we will clear those backlogs, and in Region Four, we are working to minimise as much as possible”, he said.

Minister Croal also announced that the Government, through the Central Housing and Planning Authority, will be seeking to build a total of 8000 houses per year over the next five years, totaling 40,000 houses.

He said it is an ambitious move that will be embraced by his Ministry. More than 250 contractors have already responded to expressions of interest for the construction of the first set of houses. He said the houses to be built will vary in sizes and will cover persons in all income brackets.

“We are catering for whether its low-income, we’re talking about 600 to 650 square footage, we have the moderate, the middle, we have high-income, which we call the young professionals. And believe it or not, the demand for young professionals has increased over these last few years and that is a testimony of the availability of more disposable income or the ability of persons earning more, so certainly they want a higher level or higher category of house”, Minister Croal stated.

He said there is a growing demand for completed houses in the country, and the Ministry will be pushing to meet the demand.

“As a responsible Government, we have that mandate to respond to the increasing request, or revise our work programme in keeping with what the electorate are seeking”, he said.

Croal said a number of areas have already been identified for the construction of the Government housing. It was further explained that the Housing Ministry has an aggressive programme that will also include the development of new housing areas and the construction of more roadways and added infrastructure.

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