Rowley: Govt not building ghettoes

ANNOUNCING that Government will build 8,045 houses in fiscal 2005 and the housing sector created 10,511 jobs in the last fiscal year, Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday rejected allegations that Government has embarked on a programme to build ghettoes throughout Trinidad and Tobago. In his contribution to the Budget debate in Parliament, Dr Rowley recalled that the UNC only built 3,021 houses in six years under a low housing, public sector construction programme. “Under the present arrangement of this programme, which is well underway, in the period 2003-2004 we built and delivered 3,283 units.  For the programme for 2004-2005, we propose to build 8,045 units. Much of this programme is well underway. This will put paid to the idea that we are house-padding and building slums,” he declared. The minister said a study of all the lands now being used to construct housing would show that all of these prime housing lands were left idle until the PNM came back into power in 2001. “This PNM Government is building houses there and housing people. That is our drive.

The difference in policy (between the PNM and UNC) is that the PNM believes that there is a role for the Government in the housing construction programme and that is not new. That is PNM housing policy from 1966.” Rowley boasted that for the first time in TT’s history, the PNM has convinced local banks to support Government’s housing thrust with a $1.2 billion revolving loan facility and direct employment was created for 10,511 persons in the housing sector in fiscal 2004. He said it was the PNM which arranged for ten percent of the housing contracts should go to small contractors and these contractors were instrumental in taking hundreds of young people off the streets and putting them to work in housing construction. The minister dismissed Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday’s assertion that Government’s housing programme did not cater for the poor when he disclosed that 58 percent of the National Housing Authority’s (NHA) 50,000 applicants for houses had monthly salaries of $4,000 and less.

He added that Government knew that proper housing of the population was one of several strategies which could remedy social ills such as crime, and under the current programme, persons were getting bargain prices for houses. Rowley was confident that Government would achieve its objective of 100,000 houses in ten years because TT’s finances were healthy and “a significant proportion of housing funding has been passed to the private sector banks. He spoke of plans to clear slums in East Port-of-Spain in the coming months and revitalise  Port-of-Spain’s residential areas, with work beginning on the periphery of the city.  Rowley said similar initiatives would be undertaken in Arima, San Fernando and Chaguanas. On squatter regularisation, Rowley said 2,150 lots will be regularised across TT in places like Wallerfield and Sangre Grande. The minister said efforts were ongoing to clean up the NHA’s database, legislation to create the new Housing Development Corporation would soon come to Parliament  and NHA workers would be offered VSEP in due course.