Kevon Felmine

Al­though hun­dreds of cit­i­zens flocked HDC's Port-of-Spain of­fice last week hop­ing to be ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Gov­ern­ment's 100 homes per week dis­tri­b­u­tion, not every one will be lucky, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said on Sat­ur­day.Speak­ing at a key dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the first 100 re­cip­i­ents of keys to new homes at Cashew Gar­dens, Carlsen Fields, Mooni­lal said the min­istry will use a new ran­dom draw pol­i­cy to give all ap­pli­cants a fair chance of home own­er­ship. He said even af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tions, the HDC will con­tin­ue to dis­trib­ute 100 homes a week.

"It goes on to a to­tal of 4,562 homes, where we are able to dis­trib­ute 100 homes for the week, for the rest of the year. I am al­so cog­nisant of the fact that we will not be able to dis­trib­ute to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple who want a home."We will not be able to do that in one year and so we will con­tin­ue to build and dis­trib­ute. I have man­dat­ed the HDC to en­sure that every sin­gle week we dis­trib­ute a min­i­mum of 100 homes," he said.

Com­ment­ing on the new al­lo­ca­tion dri­ve, Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said all hous­es now be­ing dis­trib­uted were built by the PNM."All the hous­es that Min­is­ter Mooni­lal is about to give away, 100 hous­es per week, we built every sin­gle one of those. Let me re­mind peo­ple that even when they say they are giv­ing out hous­es, the hous­es are not free. It is our tax­pay­ers' mon­ey that built those hous­es and the peo­ple who get the hous­es have the pay for those hous­es so it's not a gift, it's an en­ti­tle­ment," she said.

Cashew Gar­dens was start­ed un­der the PNM , but the project is on­ly par­tial­ly com­plet­ed with many units still un­der con­struc­tion. Mooni­lal said the com­mu­ni­ty, like many oth­ers start­ed be­fore 2010, was plagued with shod­dy work."We have spent over $150 mil­lion in re­pair works on a lot of the hous­ing es­tates built be­fore," the min­is­ter said.