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Hundreds of residents from Jetty, an over 50-year-old community in Vreed-en-Hoop, Best Foreshore on the West Bank of Demerara, homes are slated for demolition by the Peoples Progressive Party Civic Government. The PPP/C government deals to facilitate Exxon Mobil investments are targeting the social fabric of Guyanese whose blood, sweat, happiness, and livelihood were made in that community residents said.
Residents who spoke with our publication lamented the years they lived in that community and, with many citizens now over sixty, not having the energy strength, or capital to rebuild their lives and livelihood elsewhere. They say two hundred homes and some nine hundred children will be affected by the government’s decision. One resident said he was told by the ‘housing’ employee who came to mark the homes that, ” Exxon Mobil tek over that area and shore base will be needing this entire area.” The resident queried, “Them sell we out to the white people?” Another resident read the letter they would have received from the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) with a few lines asking them to come in and being given three-month to move.
Another resident said when the CH&PA visited the were very rude and disrespectful.“When he came he started marking these houses, you have to move, you have to move because we have to get this place in the next three months because GPL running some line but we have the highest voltage and nobody never get shocked” the resident explain her vexation. “Mr. Ali came in here and said, wow, I didn’t know all this in here I will make this place a city but pull in your fence because we are going to make a road here.” She continued “when we were building here, we fall down in the mud, all in your eyes the mud deh. We are wiping it and getting up to drag the materials.” She noted that promises were made to regularize the community by President Ali when he was the Minister of Housing, now she explained that the community feels betrayed.“
Another resident said, “Ah wander weh deh gun put we if we nah gat nunway fuh guh, we can’t move because abwe nah get nun place fuh live. Abwe live hey for fifthteen years we need house and land because abwe gat lil chirren aback hey fuh guh a school, everybody aback here poor, dem come and tek lot number suh dem see how abwe poor, if dem give abwe house and land we gun move but them ah bulldoze where abwe gun guh, pun de street” abwe gun gaffa go pun government street and black de road because abwe nah have nun place fuh live.”
Other residents of the Jetty community said they spent millions over the fifty, thirty, twenty and fifteen years they have occupied and build in the mud and marsh in the area they are calling on the government to provide them with house and land in areas with schools to facilitate their children school attendance. Another resident said, “Me husband old and weak and a wuk for twenty five thousand and me gat one daughter she ah nine year when me guh supermarket de thing them suh expensive yuh gaha cook lil bit libit when de day up suh yuh nah ah afford it suh if dem want move we give we a house and land and we guh pay wan eight thousand ah week and lil bit lil bit me nah mindful but them gaffa give me wan house and land”
Another resident said, “I am 28 years old I born and grow at the back here me mudda been pregnant when she come at the back here to live in mud. They should have taken the land since then not now when we get what we worked for, we don’t have thief man at the back here. We happy here”. The residents said when the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) came to office, “They came to the community and they built roads and give us lights to start the regularization process”. The residents said now we don’t know where we will go.
In recent months the PPP/C government have taken a position of bulldozing homes in communities across the country claiming the need for land space to promote development. Many residents of communities in Amelias’s Ward in Linden, Hillfoot on the Linden Soesdyke Highway, Cane View Mocha Arcadia and other prime locations, in communities across Guyana are being railroaded with less than three months’ notice from the government. Residents are not given time for court appearances nor access to prescriptive rights allowed for by the laws of Guyana.
