Sunday, April 20, 2008

Where is marginalization?

WHERE IS MARGINALIZATION?
PART 3 - Housing
BY PREM MISIR
In 1992 when the PPP/C formed the Government, there was no national policy on housing. The 1976 PNC Administration’s slogan ‘Feed, Clothe and House the Nation’ had minimum impact on national housing needs. And the PNC regime in 1983 pulled out the housing portfolio of the Ministry of Works and Housing and placed it in the overloaded Ministry of Health and Public Welfare.

A National Housing Plan was drafted in 1986, but it was not operationalized. And the Ministry of Housing was disbanded in 1990, and its functions transferred over to the Central Housing & Planning Authority (CH&PA). In short, no national policy on housing existed in 1992, suggesting minimum political commitment to the housing sector.



The PPP/C Administration formulated a national housing policy in 1998, and created the Ministry of Housing and Water. This Ministry’s mandate is to “formulate policies in the Human Settlements and Water Sectors and to monitor the Implementation of Plans, Programmes and Projects designed to satisfy the Housing and Water needs of the population.”

Land distribution for shelter and settlement and house lot allocation are the responsibility of CH&PA which is statutorily mandated “to make provision with respect to the housing of persons of the Working Class and purposes connected therewith” (Housing Act Ch 30:20). The CH&PA has representatives from the six municipalities, the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GLSC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Central Board of Health, the Private Sector, and the main Opposition Party.

The PPP/C Government implemented several land reforms that produced significant benefits. One, the GLSC, with a diversified governing Board of Directors, is an autonomous Commission and is no longer a department of the Ministry of Agriculture. It has responsibility for public land distribution, an important component of nation building. Two, tenure of state land leases rises from 25 to 50 years, enabling lessees to access bank loans and to convert to freeholds of up to 15 acres of land that had a land use for 25 years. Three, there is a national tenure regularization programme for providing titles for occupants of state lands. Four, a public lands register is now in place.

Equity and transparency in the land distribution process, enabling all Guyanese to become beneficiaries, are important principles of good governance. We now examine the data on house lot allocations to determine the implementation status of these principles.



Indians and Others received 53% and Africans 47% of house lots in the ten (10) Regions between 1993 and 2002. Indians and Others were the beneficiaries of the largest proportion of house lots in Regions 2, 5 and 6 while Africans found their largest allocations in Regions 3, 4, and 10. In fact in Region 10, Africans received almost all the house lots allocated. The Amerindian areas have benefitted from a small but growing number of house lots.

Over 70,000 house lots were distributed between 1992 and 2002. The major ethnic groups are recipients of fair proportions on the basis of their respective demographics, as evidenced by the Housing statistics. 91 housing schemes and 65 of the 120 squatter settlements received regularization status at the end of 2001. Also, there is a strategic plan to issue about 7,000 land titles per year. In March 2002, the Minister presented a White Paper in Parliament, addressing national land distribution policy for all Guyanese.

Again, the budgetary allocations in all these years from 1992 for housing embrace all ethnic groups, as attested through the neighbourhoods mentioned.