$600M Lethem Housing Programme sees 401 residents signing up

It has been revealed that 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.

Housing and Water Minister, Collin Croal made the disclosure on Thursday. It was disclosed that the Lethem Housing Project is an initiative announced by President, Irfaan Ali, during an outreach to the township in August this year.

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

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

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

Further, Republic Bank is the most recent bank to come on board with the project. In a media related interview on Thursday, Croal said 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 explained.

The minister noted 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,” Croal said.

Additionally, the minister pointed out that the collaboration between the government and commercial banks sees up to $1.8B GUY being injected into the district to promote the housing drive.