Opposition Member of Parliament, Annette Ferguson has presented conflicting information about the backlog of house lot applications inherited by the Coalition government.
In her recent Budget 2024 Debates speech, she stated that the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) government, at the end of 2016, was faced with a whopping 56,466 pending applications.
However, Ferguson in August 2019, during an interview on the National Communication Network’s (NCN Inc.) programme ‘INSIGHT’ on the Voice of Guyana (VOG), and in her capacity as Junior Minister of Housing and Water, said then that the existing backlog was approximately 40,000.
Logically, this meant that the coalition government was able to reduce the backlog in three years (2016 – 2019) by an estimated 16, 466. However, the APNU+AFC government only distributed a 7,534 house lots during its entire five-year term. Ferguson, therefore, by this mathematical inconsistency, has left more questions than answers. Chief among these questions is: What really was the size of the backlog as of May 2015?
In a Village Voice article published on October 9, 2020, titled “Coalition Reduced Housing, Land Application Backlog by 7,000”, Ferguson was quoted saying that when the APNU+AFC took up Office in 2015 “it met an almost 30,000 backlog of applications.” On the same date, the Kaieteur News attributed the same figure of 30,000 to Ferguson. However, in a letter she penned to the Stabroek News on January 6, 2023, Ferguson wrote: “When the Coalition assumed office in 2015, there were 56,000 pending applications for house lots.”
If the backlog was indeed 30,000 as was quoted by the aforementioned news agencies (Kaieteur News and the Village Voice) then this means that the APNU+AFC was able to fully process and reduce the backlog by 25.11%. On the other hand, using the figure of 56,000 provided by Ferguson in her letter, would mean that the APNU+AFC was able fully process and thereby reduce the backlog by 13.47%.
Current Status
Upon assuming office in 2020, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) was faced with an inherited backlog of 68,000, according to the current Housing and Water Minister, Collin Croal, during his Budget 2024 presentation.
Thus far, the Minister noted that some 30,000 lots have been distributed, marking a notable dent of approximately 44.12% in three years. This translates to 10,000 allocation per year, in contrast to the APNU+AFC’s yearly average of 1,506.
