Gov’t to push use of more local materials for housing projects
Minister of State Joseph Harmon yesterday said the government will be seeking to have a large percentage of materials used in the construction of its housing projects sourced locally and tax concessions would be offered as an incentive.
Government will soon table a paper in the National Assembly that outlines its vision.
“This paper will include the method of construction we hope to use and will focus more on indigenous and more on our local contractors before we actually go outside,” Harmon explained at a post-Cabinet press conference yesterday.
“It will also deal with the method of construction, the method of payment per unit, mortgages for recipients and criteria for allocation and included also is this issue [of] aided, self-help programmes,” he added.
Harmon informed that on Tuesday government held a ministers’ conference instead of the usual Cabinet meeting, and Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan gave an overview of the developments in the housing sector.
It was during Bulkan’s presentation that the paper to be tabled was discussed.
The Minister of State reported that Bulkan told his colleagues that after his ministry’s review of the situation of housing in Guyana, it was determined that the programme that was inherited from the People’s Progressive Party/Civic was deemed ineffective. This is because that programme primarily focused on the distribution of house lots to citizens, Harmon asserted. “The thrust by our government is to build houses within communities and this will be the focus of the housing sector development,” he added.
Under the APNU+AFC’s new housing sector development programme, the private sector will be engaged for the development of new communities. He stressed that the plan will outline government’s intention to focus more on the use of local materials in construction. Homeowners that use local materials for construction will also see tax benefits.
“We import into this country a lot of foreign species … we have a wide variety of woods in Guyana and we want to encourage the use of the woods we have here in Guyana and we want to encourage kiln drying of woods so there will be some tax benefits of that type of processing. There are some proposals to look at the production of clay brick and many of these things that made us self-sufficient …we can’t continue to buy these products from abroad, Harmon explained.
“There will be some guideline to be issue but we are saying …we have to basically mobilize our construction people…,” he added.
New CH&PA Board
To ensure that government’s mandate is being executed, a new board of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) will soon be appointed. Last weekend, the names of the new board members were gazetted.
The names submitted for the new board are Chaitram Harrypersaud, of the Anna Regina Town Council, Winifred Heywood, of the New Amsterdam Town Council, Ranwell Jordan, of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council, Tricia Hamer, of the Rose Hall Town Council, Shantaram Sugrim, of the Corriverton Town Council, Sonia Gumbs-Luke of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Michael Hutson of the Guyana Land and Surveys Commissions, Naresh Mangar, of the Central Board of Health, Egbert Carter, Mallika Mootoo, Glenyss James, Heather Martins, Thandi McAllister and Reverend Elsworth Williams.
The new board is to serve from February 1, 2017 to January 31, 2019.
The last CH&PA board was dissolved by government on December 31st last year, six months before its official
end and to the surprise of both its members and Chairman Hamilton Green.
Harmon had told Stabroek News that the dissolution came because the “rancour” between the board and the agency’s staff saw very little work being done.
He had pointed to the fact that the CH&PA had only spent 20 percent of its budgetary allocation last year, primarily due to internal conflict between the board and CH&PA staff. “Can you imagine 20 percent? How can you have a housing sector that is so critical to the development of this country and you have an authority that is wrangling with another? Every time a letter has to be signed for something, you have to wait one month, two month and they telling the Minister [in the Ministry of Communities Valerie Patterson] all sorts of nonsense. She has reported it… one time she announced the 50/50 [scheme for land payments] and the board came back and said that was unlawful, this was unlawful. It was too much of rancour,” Harmon had stressed.
“There is a saying that when elephants are fighting, it is the grass that feels the heat. So while all of that was going on, all of government’s programme for housing this nation was being stymied. You allocated sums of money and because of internal this and that and so on, it can’t be done. I mean for a whole year? Come on! …The confusion man, the expenditure on housing and the housing sector for a whole year was ridiculous,” he added.