RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says it is un­like­ly that the Gov­ern­ment will scale back on home con­struc­tion projects next year, de­spite ex­or­bi­tant in­creas­es in the price of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als.

Speak­ing to re­porters on Thurs­day at a key dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion in San Fer­nan­do, Beck­les said the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion had in ex­cess of 180,000 home ap­pli­ca­tions.

Asked whether Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed had ne­go­ti­at­ed a bet­ter price with the Gov­ern­ment to ex­e­cute sched­uled hous­ing projects, Beck­les said this was a mat­ter for the Min­istry of Trade.

She said even though the price of con­struc­tion had es­ca­lat­ed, the Gov­ern­ment will do its best to en­sure there is af­ford­able hous­ing.  

“Al­ready as we en­ter part­ner­ships with a num­ber of pri­vate com­pa­nies , they are telling us that the price they would have con­struct­ed in 2019 and 2020 is not the same. So we will have to see how we can ad­dress this is­sue of the in­creased price of ce­ment and steel.”

Asked whether hous­ing projects will be scaled back, Beck­les said, “I don’t think we will scale back be­cause the num­ber of re­quests for hous­ing has not re­duced. The price of ce­ment, steel and labour in­creas­es, we have to do a bal­anc­ing act. The like­li­hood of pur­chas­ing a house, the cost of food means that this is a chal­lenge that we will have to ad­dress. 

Beck­les al­so said that next year, the min­istry will be go­ing ag­gres­sive­ly af­ter il­le­gal oc­cu­piers of HDC homes.

She said even though fam­i­lies were fac­ing un­em­ploy­ment and hard­ship, it was il­le­gal to en­ter HDC prop­er­ties with­out per­mis­sion.

“It is wrong to go in­to a house that does not be­long to you. I can’t see how some­one can go in­to a house that you have not paid for and is not even rent­ing,” she said.

She added, “We have beefed up se­cu­ri­ty and we are do­ing our evic­tion no­tices to those per­sons. We will be a lot more ag­gres­sive in re­mov­ing peo­ple who are il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing hous­es.”

Beck­les al­so warned that more re­ports are be­ing made about il­le­gal HDC home oc­cu­pa­tion.

“We have so­cial me­dia now and peo­ple are tak­ing a video. Even be­fore we can com­plete the hous­es, peo­ple are en­ter­ing hous­es. Some peo­ple feel they have a right to oc­cu­py hous­es just be­cause it is emp­ty. This is il­le­gal and wrong,” she added.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al- Rawi said 80 homes have been built at Bayshore, Mara­bel­la for con­stituents.

He said peo­ple in these im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties had been in­vis­i­ble for years. Al-Rawi ex­plained that the ac­qui­si­tion of tenure and prop­er hous­es will give the fam­i­lies an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a bet­ter life.