401 residents sign on to the $600M Lethem Housing Programme

Some 401 residents of Lethem, Region Nine signed on to the Central Housing and Planning Authority’s (CH&PA) Lethem Housing Support Programme, a government assistance initiative for the Lethem Housing Construction Project.

This was disclosed by Housing and Water Minister, Collin Croal on Thursday.

Housing and Water Minister, Collin Croal

The Lethem Housing Project is an initiative announced by President, Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, during an outreach to the township in August this year.

The initiative, valued at $600 million, will see the government contributing $1 million each to 600 low-income homeowners to mitigate the cost of their home construction.

President Ali had also announced that the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) and the New Building Society (NBS) would finance the remaining $2 million for the prospective homeowners at a rate of 3.5 per cent.

The collateral-free gesture from the two financial institutions would see the 600 allottees repaying just about $14,000 per month.

Republic Bank is the most recent bank to come on board with the project.

Speaking during an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI) on Thursday, the minister stated that the materials and labour for the home construction will be procured locally.

“The beneficiaries from those programmes come from three cluster areas. That is for the Tabatinga area, Culvert City, as well as our new housing development in Lethem. And those are persons that would have benefitted from an allocation recently,” he said.

He explained that the housing development programme caters to persons who are not financially equipped to construct their homes upon receiving a house lot to begin building their new homes

“So here you have a programme that has never been implemented before in Guyana. And there is an opportunity for people to own their own homes, and start. But the key criterion is that you must own your lot. So those are the persons who are the beneficiaries,” the minister said.

The collaboration between the government and commercial banks sees up to $1.8 billion being injected into the district to promote the housing drive.

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