Minister of Housing and Urban Development Delivers Housing Units in El Dorado under the Ministry’s Housing and Village Improvement Programme

The Housing and Urban Development Minister, the Honourable Major General (Ret’d) Edmund Dillon recently distributed seventeen (17) new starter units to beneficiaries in O’Meara/D’Abadie, Tunapuna and St. Joseph at the Upper El Dorado Community Centre under the Ministry’s Housing and Village Improvement Programme (HVIP). One of the recipients at this event was the national “flag man” Mr. Hurbert Diaz.

The Housing and Village Improvement Programme which was conceptualized and implemented in fiscal 2018, is designed to improve both the existing housing stock and the general infrastructure of villages in rural and peri-urban areas.

It is also a tool to reduce the demand for new housing stock, as it is meant to complement the Ministry’s Accelerated Housing Programme and the Government’s Aided Self-Help Housing Programme.

Its purest intent is simply to improve the quality of life of citizens in targeted communites by providing infrastructural amenities and access to socio-economic opportunities, where possible.

The Land Settlement Agency, an agency under the remit of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, was tasked to carry out social surveys in order to identify and prioritise those communities that were in dire need of help.

This is all part of the Government’s development thrust to improve the quality of life in communities, and ensure that interventions of this nature serve to complement and support other activities taking place within the area. In this way, we can encourage and promote socio-economic activity through backward linkages within these communities.

The LSA has also been mandated to project manage the programme, and in keeping with government’s strategic policy, has retained small to medium contractors within these communities or environs so as to keep construction costs down.

More than 136 families have benefited from this programme since its inception in areas such as Moruga, Rampanalgas, Cumuto, La Brea, Claxton Bay, Embacadere and Marabella.