PPP asking young professionals to pay US$62.5 per sq foot while Floridians pay US$83?

Jun 09, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Hydar Ally and Irfaan Ali, wonderful coincidence indeed, have been beating the drum seemingly given to them by the PPP power brokers about the PPP’s accomplishments in housing. I have continuously exposed the PPP housing drive as a major scam that takes the land of the Guyanese people and resells it to the Guyanese people at insane profits. In addition, it has given away the people’s land to a select few at subpar below-market values while trying to sell Guyanese at pig in the poke prices. This new housing scheme for young professionals in Eccles is typical; 1200 square feet for $15 million (US $75,000).
That is US $62.50 per square foot. In Florida, property prices are US $83 per square foot. In Florida, the GDP per capita is US $40,000. In Guyana it is US $3148. To amend a Tradewinds classic, who does the PPP think is the ass and who is the jackass in this endeavour? In Florida, you get great roads, playgrounds, water, electricity and all full amenities when you pay US $83 per square foot. In Guyana, they give you a narrow strip with some asphalt and let you live in squalor and want to charge you US $62.50. Who does the PPP think it is fooling? It can’t be the public who knows the PPP gave Jagdeo the most prime real estate in Guyana at $5 million per acre while remigrants are being asked to pay $7 million for 8000 square feet or 0.18 of an acre on the East Bank, not Pradoville 2. For those remigrants, one acre in that remigrant scheme would cost $38 million. Yet Jagdeo got his acre for $5 million.
Kaieteur News published an article on January 23, 2011 titled “NICIL transfers public property to PM, Queens Atlantic, 28 others.” It documents the PPP pillage that is occurring right under our noses in our land. National Hardware Guyana Limited got 103.88 acres of prime real estate at Liliendaal and Pattensen in the vicinity of the Convention Centre, Caricom and other major developments for $600 million which works out to $5,775,895 per acre. This is one of the most shocking travesties of the PPP government and its NICIL lapdog. 103.88 acres is 4525012.8 square feet of land. If we calculate this based on the size and sale price of the remigrant lots, then 103.88 acres should produce 565.63 plots of 8000 square feet each. At $7 million per plot as is asked from remigrants, the land will garner $3.959 billion in revenues and $3.359 billion in profits. This is the wonderful housing drive the PPP has given to the victims of the Guyanese nation. This decrepit tale of the PPP selling out the nation’s land for a pittance is repeated all over this land. And Irfaan Ali and his PPP teammate Hydar Ali have the barefaced gumption to come and tell Guyanese people about young professional scheme and housing achievements.
Those ordinary-looking 1200 square feet homes can be built for $10 million or less, which means these young professionals are being asked to buy this land at probably the same price as the remigrants. Who is building these homes for the ministry and where is the public tender for building of these homes? The PPP continues to profit from selling Guyanese people their own land.
The PPP is taking our taxes from squeezing the Guyanese people with VAT and other taxes and then using it to develop land which it sells to developers at bargain basement rates and then turns around and tries to sell Guyanese their own land for a king’s ransom. The land it sells to the public is poorly developed with shameful infrastructure.
Now they are going further by building some laughable homes and trying to get people to pay an arm and a leg for it. The PPP has created the runaway housing market that has priced poor and working class families out of the market. Its refusal to tackle money laundering and drug trafficking in any meaningful fashion has allowed massive sums of laundered money from all kinds of illegal activities to enter the housing and real estate market and inflate prices and further distance the poor and working class from home ownership. Its failure to stem corruption has allowed billions to be stolen every year from the people of Guyana and laundered into the housing and real estate markets.
This is a government that has no problem giving 1.82 million acres of Guyana or 2900 square miles to an Indian coffee mogul (Vaitarna) for $330 per acre but wants young professionals to pay $15 million for 1200 square feet on a strip of land so small if you cough your neighbour catches the cold. Vaitarna got four times the entire coastline and 3.5% of Guyana for $330 per acre yet taxpayers must pay millions for a small plot of land.
Massa will get their Pradoville mansions by the sea while the poor and the powerless get some dirt on their hands. At this rate, they won’t even have any dirt left. We, who our ancestors were beaten, tortured, dehumanized and killed on this land are being enslaved and indentured on it all over again.
 M. Maxwell

 

 

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