HGP Nightly News – Days after being evicted from State lands at the Guyana–China Friendship Park area in Schoonard, families relocated by the housing authorities are now facing a new crisis: their promised lands are bare, lacking water, electricity, roads, and drainage, essentially uninhabitable plots that exist only on paper.
APNU Members of Parliament Sherod Duncan and Juretha Fernandes conducted a site visit to the area on Friday, February 20, following the recent removal of families who had occupied State lands. The visit was intended to assess the aftermath of enforcement action that saw households displaced, with the Ministry of Housing subsequently announcing that seven of the thirteen affected families had been allocated house lots, and the remaining were being processed under a structured relocation framework.
What the MPs found on the ground told a different story.
Residents who had been relocated voiced deep frustration over the condition and readiness of their new allocations. Several pointed out that the plots lack basic infrastructure, making them impossible to occupy. Without water, electricity, or road access, families who lost their homes now find themselves with land they cannot use, a cruel halfway house between displacement and genuine resettlement.
Others expressed anger over what they described as limited communication and insufficient consultation before enforcement action was taken. While formal notices were issued, residents said meaningful engagement on relocation timelines and the practicalities of moving was almost entirely absent. The result is a community scattered, uncertain, and now speaking out.
“This is not relocation. This is abandonment,” one resident told the visiting MPs.
Duncan and Fernandes said the visit formed part of their ongoing oversight of housing and relocation matters, particularly where enforcement actions intersect with vulnerable households. They acknowledged the State’s responsibility to protect public lands and advance national projects, but insisted that relocation must meet basic standards of fairness, transparency, and service readiness.
“If you move people from their homes, you must move them to a place where they can actually live,” Duncan said following the visit. “What we saw today are plots of land with no infrastructure. No water, no light, no road. That is not a house lot. That is a promise without delivery.”
The MPs indicated that the concerns raised will now inform further parliamentary scrutiny of the Central Housing and Planning Authority’s relocation framework, infrastructure preparedness, and the broader question of value for money in the government’s housing programme.
