Shas­tri Boodan

The Gov­ern­ment’s na­tion­al hous­ing pro­gramme is set to be­gin this year, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh an­nounced on Wednes­day.

Speak­ing at a na­tion­al bud­get con­sul­ta­tion host­ed by Ca­roni Cen­tral MP and Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee at Three Road, Freeport, Swarats­ingh said the ad­min­is­tra­tion has found a way to com­mer­cialise the in­com­plete hous­ing stock left by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

He dis­closed that the Hous­ing Min­istry is ne­go­ti­at­ing $750 mil­lion in fi­nanc­ing to com­plete those units and be­gin dis­tri­b­u­tion. Once this is fi­nalised, he said, the UNC-led Gov­ern­ment will launch its hous­ing ini­tia­tive, aim­ing to de­liv­er 10,000 homes to cit­i­zens.

Swarats­ingh al­so said that plans are un­der­way to make it eas­i­er for pri­vate de­vel­op­ers to ac­cess fi­nanc­ing for res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion and oth­er de­vel­op­ment projects.

He ac­knowl­edged the sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try, not­ing that the na­tion­al debt has more than dou­bled—from $70 bil­lion in 2015 to $145 bil­lion in 2025. He es­ti­mat­ed it will take five to ten years to ful­ly turn the econ­o­my around.

In his re­marks, Min­is­ter Lee said ur­gent at­ten­tion is be­ing giv­en to the Preysal Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, where stu­dents have spent the last decade at­tend­ing class­es at a di­lap­i­dat­ed com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

“Preysal Pri­ma­ry School is one of the high-pri­or­i­ty schools to be com­plet­ed in the next fis­cal year. I want to as­sure the com­mu­ni­ty of that,” Lee said.

He added that wa­ter sup­ply re­mains an­oth­er crit­i­cal is­sue for the con­stituen­cy but re­port­ed over­all im­prove­ment in na­tion­al wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion since the UNC took of­fice.

Res­i­dents of Cashew Gar­dens ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that their com­mu­ni­ty still lacks a func­tion­ing pri­ma­ry school. They re­called that Palmiste Gov­ern­ment School, which served the area, was de­stroyed by fire in 2023 and its stu­dents have since been split be­tween the Ed­in­burgh 500 Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and Long­denville Gov­ern­ment School.

Al­though five acres of land were al­lo­cat­ed for the con­struc­tion of Long­denville Pres­by­ter­ian School back in 2005, the project has nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Mean­while, res­i­dents of Ed­in­burgh 500 are call­ing for the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre cur­rent­ly hous­ing dis­placed stu­dents to be hand­ed over for vil­lage de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes once the stu­dents are re­lo­cat­ed.

Farmer Sharaz, speak­ing dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion, crit­i­cised the con­tin­ued ne­glect of Carlsen Field and the wider agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, de­scrib­ing it as “the bas­tard child of the econ­o­my.”

He said agri­cul­ture must be mod­ernised and re­brand­ed to ap­peal to younger gen­er­a­tions, adding that mil­lions have been wast­ed due to aban­doned projects.

“One ex­am­ple is the $40 mil­lion in­vest­ed at Mon Jaloux to pro­duce grass for an­i­mals. That fa­cil­i­ty was shut down un­der the last gov­ern­ment and has been left to rot for the past nine years. It needs to be re­vived,” he said.

Sharaz al­so raised con­cerns about the lack of prop­er food safe­ty over­sight, claim­ing the Chem­istry, Food and Drug Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health has been non-func­tion­al since 2014.

“Since then, no­body has been do­ing prop­er test­ing ex­cept Cariri,” he said.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram al­so ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, shar­ing his plans for re­vi­tal­is­ing the sec­tor, though de­tails were not pro­vid­ed at the meet­ing.