House lot applicants wait for two decades, now given 2 weeks to contact CH&PA

Oct 27, 2017 News

The Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), facing uphill challenges to seize hundreds of acres of prime lands sold by the previous administrations to private developers, is getting tough on another area where it is experiencing problems.
In a notice Wednesday, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Lelon Saul, listed 100 applicants who filed for house lots as far back as 1991.
The applicants have a mere two weeks to make contact with the staff of the Land Administration and Conveyancing Department, on or before November 10th, 2017.
“Applicants are required to bring along their national identification card or a valid passport and all other documents relating to the applicant, for submission to the staff of the department,” the CEO said in a notice.
CH&PA is facing all kinds of trouble. It has no lands to allocate to applicants. It has over 20,000 applications of file. But there is little evidence to say whether the persons have died or migrated.
The challenge now is how to reduce those applications.
However, Wednesday’s notice is causing some level of consternation among persons who saw it.
“We have people who receive lands on which nothing is being done other than speculation. Yet we have poor people against whom the whip is being brought out. This is absurd,” one caller told Kaieteur News. He is from West Demerara and is without a house lot.
According to CH&PA, applicants who do not respond to this notice on or before November 10, 2017, will be deemed no longer interested in an allocation.
The big stick approach would come at a time when CH&PA has also been cracking down on squatting in places like Sophia and Cummings Lodge.