Among the ways the government intends to invest in the people of Guyana, according to the 2021 National Budget, is to allocate 10,000 house lots and distribute 7,000 land titles and it has set aside $6 billion for infrastructure and utility works in new and existing housing areas. Its loftier goal is to deliver the same amount of house lots every year up to 2025, by which time it expects to have allocated 50,000. This sounds impressive but the perception does not match the reality. While there are thousands of citizens who are grateful to have benefited from the housing programme over the years, the majority of them, particularly low-income earners, have done so through blood, sweat and tears and burdened with heavy debts and not the magnanimity of any government.
To date, for the average Guyanese, a house lot has been a bushy piece of land off a dirt road or sometimes no road, running water or electricity. Having paid for the plot of land, which could cost thousands, hundreds of thousands or a million-plus dollars, the prospective homeowner is threatened with loss of same if building does not commence shortly thereafter.
Philanthropist Beverley Bentham, who laid out her journey to home ownership in an interview published in this newspaper last Sunday, is a case in point. She related struggling through knee-deep mud to convey housing materials ten years ago. Her building materials were stolen when the truck transporting them was forced to offload them some distance from her house lot as it could go no further because there was no road. When her house was finally built, her family moved in, but there was no electricity or potable water.
They now have access to both of these utilities, but the frustration, cost and struggle she recalled are par for the course for the majority of families building from scratch in the suburban and rural areas where house lots are available. These issues along with access to healthcare, education and to some extent recreation and safety are among the reasons people prefer to live in cities or towns even if where they dwell is subpar or a shack.
Rural to urban shifts in Guyana many years ago resulted in the extension of Georgetown to an unsustainable urban sprawl. Land, power, water, drainage and other resources have been stretched to their limits and aesthetics skewed. Still, the Mayor and City Council is unable to collect property taxes to help to efficiently manage the city.
Perhaps in the hope of easing the pressure on the city, successive governments since 1992 have carved up former cane fields and rural land for housing developments. But the majority of people who have moved to these places are still forced to travel to the city daily for work, schooling or shopping, which has exacerbated the issues of transportation and traffic congestion. The problem is that there was and is no master plan. This is notwithstanding the fact that Georgetown is known to be vulnerable to climate change.
Governments have been handing out housing plots and leaving the building of communities to the people, which is retrogressive. This lack of vision is possibly among the reasons this country has just one city and why towns are declared and not built. Diamond Housing Scheme, on the East Bank Demerara, is one example of a missed opportunity. Although the inhabitants of that community have put in the work, it was initially laid out with very narrow streets, not enough green spaces, poor water infrastructure and a dependency on the overburdened national electricity grid.
According to a World Bank report published in April last year, urbanization is trending and some 55% of the world’s population – 4.2 billion people – live in cities. With this expected to double by 2050, the report noted, countries need to act to prevent overpopulation. Where feasible this entails putting in place public transportation, affordable housing, infrastructure and basic services. Where it is not, countries have been building anew. Planned cities and towns can cost billions of dollars, but they are able to take advantage of modern technology and renewable energy. Properly planned, they eventually pay for themselves and the opportunities are endless. Think designated areas for commerce, green spaces, wide streets, bicycle paths, a reliable water supply and efficient sewage disposal, a solar plant or wind farm, a transport system, schools, hospitals, tourist attractions. Think order. Think jobs.
Between 1995 and 2019 nine new cities have debuted around the world. They were not all built from scratch and some are still being developed, but considering that one of them – Rawabi – exists in the politically tumultuous and violent area of the West Bank (currently occupied by Israel), it must be short-sightedness that plagues us.
Are governments really investing in people when there is paucity of clarity in vision? How can progress just be more of the same? Where is the master plan for the kind of growth necessary for citizens to enjoy healthy lives? Through continuous lack of foresight, successive governments have been shirking their responsibility to truly shape the future of a developed Guyana.
