Dear Editor,
I refer to a statement by Junior Minister of Housing Susan Rodriques in the Inews of August 1st, 2023 where she boasted about the commencement of the construction of 210 young professional homes at LBI. Editor I have two major challenges with this Government and the utterances of its officials:
1. They always talk about the plan to do this, the commencement of this, construction of that, but you will never hear them talking about this project was completed and so many persons were hired because of the project. Let me share a sample: – July 18, 2023 – GUY$612 million in contracts to be awarded – NOT AWARDED, NOT STARTED; July 16, 2023 – US$45 million Blue Ridge Hotel at Liliandaal to commence – NO MACHINERY MOBILISED, much less started; July 1, 2023 – VP Jagdeo announced GUY$400 million for the enhancement of sports grounds in Berbice – STILL A PIPE DREAM; January 29, 2023 – 100,000 persons to benefit from Hinterland ICT Projects, we do not even have that much people in the hinterlands and the project has not started, so it is a BLATANT mischaracterization of the truth; July 22, 2022 – President Ali turned the sod at the US$45 million AC Marriott Hotel at Ogle and promised not only this hotel by the end of 2023, but a Sheraton Marriot also by Christmas 2023 but to date none of these facilities are at the 50% development mark after one year. And the same old story of smoke and mirrors continue.
2. But more importantly is an illusionary fraud taking place when it is not allowing the middle class and the not so well off but working people a chance to decent housing. Any society that aspires to be the Dubai of the Caribbean has a duty to its citizens to provide a decent place to live that does not eat up the majority of their income and that is not happening in Guyana under President Ali. Be it teachers, nurses or public servants, affording a home for your family to live in, is now increasingly harder than it was when His Excellency was the Minister of Housing. So clearly the situation has deteriorated today. For most ordinary Guyanese, if they are lucky enough to acquire a house lot and have a little savings, they are faced with mortgage payment chewing up close to 40% of their income if one person is working. But what is even worse, the connected and those who are fronting for the political elite are being given large swaths of land at peppercorn value to build rental accommodation at astronomical rates, so much so that only foreigners and those working in the oil industry can afford these rents. Guyanese are now priced out of the rental market in their own country under President Ali. My friends, Guyana has a housing crisis for Guyanese, the banks; they hold the interest rates and squeeze the people and we have a whole government operating as an impotent bystander. How can any government allow its people to weather this financial storm in the current mortgage market?
But what is even worse, the Leader of the Opposition and his point man on Finance, one Mr. Lowe, seems clueless on the policy recommendation that has to be made public to ease the pressure. So it is clear the deaf (the PPP/C Government who is not listening to the people) and the blind (the PNC led opposition that is indifferent to the plight of the people) are controlling this country to the detriment of the majority who are struggling to get by. Since President Ali came to office, for the ordinary mortgage seekers, there has not been any welcoming news; only promises of this and promises of that and when the ordinary man goes to the bank most are given the whole nine yards of “you are too risky a client so we will have to charge you a higher interest rate” which is pricing people out of the opportunity to own their very first home. President Ali, rather than gallivanting all over the place, please stay at home and fix this mess; it is your job buddy. Please do your job.
If President Ali was doing his job on this housing crisis, he would have known that there is a structural problem with house prices because they have rocketed since Oil and Gas arrived and this challenge is completely dislocated from the amount of money the majority of Guyanese are earning. If one is to reflect on proper economic principles, it will reveal that a house that is more than five times one’s annual income is unaffordable. So for a police constable that takes home GUY$150,000 a month, any house costing more than GUY$9 million means he has to “tek a bribe” to keep up. On average across Guyana, house prices are 17 times the annual income of the average man. But the highest disparity is in Georgetown where the average house prices are 28 times the income of the average man. A smallish house in Kingston in not a good condition is on the market for GUY$95 million. How on earth can a teacher afford that? So she has to join the line at Brickdam and wait years for the lottery to pull a house lot number out of a bag and in the meantime pay average rental in Georgetown not cheaper than GUY$50,000. Editor, the end result is that the dream of owning your own home for ordinary workers is becoming remote for people who does not earn more than GUY$200,000 a month and guess what, that is thousands of Guyanese families now priced out of the market. Mr. President; HELP!
Sincerely,
(Name and Address Withheld)
