Dear Editor,
We are writing in response to the article in KN, November 3, under the headline, ‘CH&PA cracks down on empty house lots.’
People have been waiting for 5 years and sometimes more, in some cases almost twice that time, before they are issued with a house lot by the CH&PA. The cost for these house lots ranges from $300,000-$1,200,000 and even more depending on where they are located.
While the government claims that it has “vision” and would like to move ahead with same, poor people also have visions they would like to realize, but unfortunately, in many instances that’s all we can afford, “vision.”
Poor people are scraping to survive on the starvation money we are forced to accept and over and over we have been highlighting how we have to forego one thing for another. Not that some of these items are not important ‒ they are! But that is the reality of how we live. Some of us live in rented houses and some at the homes of relatives or friends. One of our main visions is to have our own homes, but how can we, when we can hardly afford to feed our families? For some of us who were able eventually to receive house lots, one of the things we have to forego in order to even acquire the advance payment is food. Yes, an item as essential as this.
Unless Minister Scott walks a mile in our shoes (he should come live with us for one week, although we don’t think he will last a day), he and the rest of his government can only speculate about what we should or should not do. Some of them might have grown up poor, but once they were fortunate to rise above that situation, they distanced themselves so as not to remember what it tasted like.
It is out of order for any government to demand that once granted a house lot, one must commence building within six months. If we can’t afford to pay for the land, how are we going to build? Or are they saying to us, ‘If yuh want house, yuh either have money or forget it’? Is that the message they are sending to us? We are not happy to be poor. It is not our fault that poverty is a phenomenon. It is the system that is set up to work against us that has us in this situation: meagre wages and salaries, high utility bills, the high cost of sending our children to school, expensive house lots, 16% VAT, to name a few. We are quality people too. We make up the majority of the population and are making our contributions to the development of this country, whether we are security guards, domestic workers/sweeper cleaners, teachers, nurses, police officers, shop assistants or clerks in a ministry.
Development in our country has no relevance if the lives of poor people remain the same. For years we have been calling for economic planning that starts from the bottom up. We need planning that takes account of our household economies, not something called a ‘national economy’ that does not take us, the grassroots, into consideration.
Minister Scott was out of order to say that “…no longer will the ministry give ears to those who give the excuse that they have not taken up their lot because the housing areas are without adequate infrastructure…” If you are developing a housing scheme it must have the necessary infrastructure, otherwise you are putting more pressure on already burdened poor people to find money we don’t have. We know of cases where people have to find money to bring water and electricity from far distances to their home. As recently as last year, a poor family (outside of Georgetown) who acquired a house lot and managed to get a loan to build, was forced to find an additional $170,000 to pay for a lantern post and cable in order to get electricity to their home because when they applied, they were told that GPL was not ready to install electricity to that section, but if they could provide the aforementioned, then they would get electricity. There was not even one lantern post in the street. So just think about the length of cable required. What about the people who were not able to access loans? What about those of us who can’t in any way raise that money?
We refuse to tolerate this contemptuous behaviour towards us. Give us a livable wage; affordable access to goods and services; housing with the necessary facilities; health care; utilities such as electricity and water; education; and a reduction in VAT. Give us “a better life.” We are Guyanese.
Yours faithfully,
Joy Marcus
Halima Khan
Wintress White
Joycelyn Bacchus
For Red Thread
