This move, we believe, will go a long way in ensuring that Guyanese, especially those in the low income bracket will now be in a stronger position to pay for their land titles, thus paving the way for them to access loans and enabling them to realise their life-long dream of owning their own homes.

Guyanese are appreciative of the efforts made by the Ministry of Housing to hand out land titles to the people. The latest distribution of land titles was made in the last two weeks, when Housing Minister Baksh handed out 500 titles to residents from the Corentyne and 42 to residents from Mosquito Hall on the East Coast Demerara.

It cannot be over-emphasised that the Ministry of Housing and Water has since 1993 embarked on a very ambitious plan aimed at housing the nation, making quantum leaps in this regard year after year.

So grave was the housing situation prior to 1992 that the people were engaged in squatting ‘Wild West style’.

The people will recall that the current Government inherited some 180 squatting areas in the country from the previous PNC Government, and indeed the Ministry of Housing was given the Herculean task of regularising the squatter settlements, identifying lands, and making house lots available for the multitude of Guyanese.

To say the least, the Ministry of Housing as was expected, from the word ‘go’, set about its tasks with astute leadership, scoring success after success.

Today, with pride, the Government is boasting, and quite rightly so, that in the ten years since taking political power, it has so far established 92 housing schemes, distributed more than 55,000 house lots and regularised 99 squatter settlements across Guyana.

We are delighted to learn that Government’s housing drive is continuing and that by the end of this year another 8,000 house lots will be distributed to Guyanese in both the low and middle-income brackets.

We believe that by making house lots available to these two brackets of income earners, the Housing Ministry is indeed making a sterling contribution to Government’s strategy paper on reducing poverty.

We feel that no man can exercise his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the ownership of a house lot on which to build his own house. Deprived of this, his life, his liberty and his fate, fall into the hands of those who own large tracts of land, which have been left idle over the years.