CATEGORY:HOUSING
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By Wallace J.A, Inside Grenada correspondent
Sunday October 22, 2006


ST. GEORGE ‘S, Grenada – While delivering the throne speech to mark the opening of the fourth session of the seventh parliament on Friday October 13, Grenada’s Governor General, Sir Daniel Williams, informed the members of both houses that the government’s material distribution scheme will be discontinued and replaced by a housing repair loan scheme.

He informed the gathering at the Trade Center that the government has addressed the needs of thousands of people in the most vulnerable groups and will continue to do so, however, the grant funding which made the free material assistance program possible has now been utilized and so the program has come to an end. With the limited funds available, a housing repair loan scheme, to be designed and operated from within the Prime Minister’s ministry, will replace the free material assistance program.

While the free housing material assistance program benefited many of the persons that it was designed to target (vulnerable cases), many persons would have abused it. It is rumored that some ‘needy persons’ would have received assistance from the program and would have either sold the material given to them, or use it for some other purpose than what it was intended for.

Some persons sought to use the material to build bigger houses, add new rooms, build ‘new homes’ or replace their ‘board shutters’ with new glass windows. It is also believed that persons would have applied to different aid agencies for the same material assistance and would have gotten material from different sources for the same purpose. As one person aptly put it, “Everybody quarreling and making confusion because everybody want something, whether they have or they don’t have.”

The Government of Grenada, through the Agency for Reconstruction and Development (ARD), will continue working with the Chinese Government for the construction of some 2000 houses in different parts of the country. The Government of Venezuela is also expected to construct an additional 500 houses. Soon, the Grenadian Government is expected to distribute 130 homes at Lacalome - constructed by the Venezuelan government - to needy Grenadians.

As for the people residing in vulnerable areas of Marquis and Soubise in St. Andrew’s and in other parts of the country, the government has given its commitment to have them relocated to safer areas as soon as possible.