Due to the increasing demand for house lots and land for industrial activities, Minister of Housing and Water, Collin Croal, has announced that the Central Housing and Planning Authority is seeking to acquire additional lands to meet the demand.

He said in some regions, lands have been identified to facilitate further expansion of existing housing areas, but in other regions, there is still a search to acquire new lands.

He made the announcement today at the Housing Ministry’s “Dream Realised” house lot distribution drive for the East Coast of Demerara.

“The work continues for us to acquire new lands, in this year alone, our focus will be on regions 1, 3, 4, 6 and a portion in 5.  Areas in region 10 and 7 have already been identified, so those will be our focus regions,” Mr. Croal said.

The Minister acknowledged that it is not an easy task to find additional lands for housing in some areas, explaining that the resources required to develop the lands are much more costly when compared to developing lots individually.

“And simply because we have to keep going inwards, as we keep going inwards, we keep going closer to the conservancies and as we keep going closer to the conservancies, the preparatory work requires much more when compared to when we are closer out on the mainland. So that is one of the reasons you will see we have an increase cost when doing these communities,” the Minister noted.

More than $36B in contracts were awarded in the past months for the development of new housing areas.

Further, as it relates to the distribution policy, the Ministry of Housing has assured that there is no discrimination in the allocation of house lots.

“We do not take into consideration how your name sounds or how you look when we are dealing with allocation, because we continue get accusations and persons with their own political alignment—but we don’t look at that,” Mr. Croal assured.

Meanwhile, the Housing Minister has warned citizens who are still awaiting house lots not fall prey to persons who claim to have “connections” in Ministry of Housing.

He said the Ministry is working overtime to ensure that everyone who applies for a house lot is given one.

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