Major gains for city planners from Canada-Guyana project, says Ali

City planners are now better equipped to respond to the booming housing sector after a three-year Canada-Guyana Partnership for Community Planning project wrapped up its activities here yesterday.

Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali said the “comprehensive” project, which sought to develop best practices through practical learning scenarios, was timely and useful, during his address at a simple closing ceremony hosted at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) office.

“This partnership has brought tremendous benefit for stakeholders and those in our communities and the people of Guyana,” he told an audience that comprised executives from the programme, CIDA and the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA).

Irfaan Ali

Ali highlighted the importance of community-based planning for his ministry and CH&PA to empowering people through a system of participatory democracy in decision-making. “As a result of this inclusive nature, this community-based participatory nature of this programme, what we have seen in the pilot areas is ownership,” he said, pointing out that his ministry benefited significantly from the project as it enabled a partnership between the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) and the CH&PA. The universities of the West Indies, Guyana and Suriname (Anton de Kom) also collaborated with CIP. Canadian experts conducted training programmes and courses for relevant public sector em-ployees and community leaders.

Project Coordinator Jose Canjura said since the start of the project in 2009, two micro-projects aimed at engaging communities were executed at a cost of Cdn$6,000. Four Community Development Plans (CDPs) also evolved from the project and are set to be approved next month by the CH&PA Board. Several other CDPs are also being reviewed. The project also enabled the Planning Department to review its methodology in order to create CDPs with the expectation that there will be greater local capacity and that the CH&PA would better able to understand and apply the methodology, he said.

The micro-projects were aimed at engaging communities and teaching them to prepare and execute their own projects. The two projects were at Area B Lusignan and Bell West. At Bell West the project entailed creating an open space for community recreation while the other residents were given support to complete a catering course and furnish the multipurpose community building. “We were happy to see great levels of community participation. There was a lot of engagement and a lot of leadership shown by the community groups involved,” he Canjura said.

Since then the CH&PA has started a quarterly newsletter aimed at not only creating a better relationship with communities and keeping them better informed but also to foster transparency and accountability. The creation of a Community Planning Toolkit also resulted from the project. “We had really positive reactions from those who participated in the training programmes,” Canjura said.