Unfortunately, by then only 13,000 units were built and shortly after that housing development was abandoned leading eventually to a closure of the Housing Ministry.

From thereon, an acute shortage of housing developed and rentals for flats skyrocketed, especially in the urban areas where the population density is high.

This situation precipitated squatting all over the country, because there were no legal house lots available or being distributed and out of desperation people squatted.

The cost of a house and land skyrocketed, while the acute shortage of building materials caused prices to reach levels that made it virtually impossible for ordinary people to buy or build houses.

The coming to office of this Government in October 1992 saw a renewed and vigorous housing development programme. To date, more than 30,000 house lots have been distributed, several new housing schemes have been and are being developed while many land titles have been given out.

A welcome announcement has been made by Minister of Housing and Water, Mr. Shaik Baksh that the ministry plans to distribute more than 5,000 land titles during this year, having already distributed over 2,000 last year.

In addition, Letters of Assurance have been issued to hundreds of allottees who have paid off for their lots enabling them to obtain loans to build their houses.

Electricity supply is being installed in the new housing schemes under the Unserved Areas Electrification Project (UAEP) being jointly funded by the Government of Guyana (GOG)/Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), while infrastructure development is being accelerated through funding from the European Union totalling some G$1.8B.

The problem of squatting is also being addressed with 65 of the existing 120 areas already regularised and another 25 targeted for this year.

The performance of the Ministry of Housing and Water has been impressive. However, there are still two areas of major concern.

One of these is the inability of low income earners to find the money to build their houses, even though they have titles or Letters of Assurances to obtain loans which have to be repaid. This group, a fairly large one, simply does not have the ability to sustain a loan because many may not have a steady income or it is too small or both.

The other concern is still the slow pace of processing house lots, even though recently there has been an appreciable improvement.

Sometimes huge successes tend to cause a neglect of problems that still persist and as such these are not addressed resulting in discontent and frustration.

The Housing Ministry has much to be proud of but it has to pay attention too to the kinks in the system that can blot the bigger picture.