Viewers may remember the parliamentary sparring match which happened 1 month ago between Shyne Barrow, the UDP Area Rep. for Mesopotamia, and Julius Espat, the new Minister of Infrastructure Development and Housing.
One of Shyne's questions was for Espat, the Minister responsible for Housing. The first term Mesop rep basically reminded Espat that he and the PUP have made an election manifesto promise to deliver 10,000 houses to Belizeans in need.
Well, two days ago, the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing made a post on Facebook to inform the general public that it has almost finished the construction of its first prototype of the homes. The ministry intends to build these houses which will be rolled out as part of the Briceno Administration's commitment to providing affordable housing.
This evening, Espat granted us a telephone interview to discuss the plans:
Voice of: Hon. Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development and Housing
"Its part of our manifesto to be able to provide low cost housing to the people of Belize and that is our mandate. We have been diligently working on the planning aspect of it and we have completed that to a certain extent and now we are in the second phase which is physically building some prototypes. We have about 4 prototypes that are in the process of being built and then once those are completed I would assume the first one will be finish by the end of this month. The others, shortly after and then we will have a better idea as to where we want to go. What materials are best to be used and we will have a better grasp as to the cost and then it coincides that we are presenting a budget that is coming up at the end of this month and early next month and hopefully we will be able to make a good preposition to cabinet and to our colleagues so that there can be a budget for this coming year to start some of the houses. I think it will gradually increase. This year we will do some houses in each constituency and then from there we have to look at land. Land will be a major issue. The construction of the houses in my humble opinion is not that difficult. Technology is available and once the budget is there we will be able to do that. But access to land is something that we will have to work very closely with the ministry of natural resources because we won't be able to build houses if we don't have either a lease or a title."
"The concept is that the low cost houses will be built for residents and citizens of this country that have not owned a house before and so that is the main criteria. You have to prove that you have not own a house before and you are in need of shelter which we believe is a human right and so we are going in that direction. There will be 2 ways of achieving this; one is a social program by the government of Belize assisting to a certain extent by means of grant and low cost financing and the other is a private/public partnership where we partner with the private sector to be able to give low cost financing and through the private sector we will be able to do the projects at a larger scale."
Espat stressed that the financing element of this program is still being worked out to provide affordable access to potential homeowners. He added that part of the plan is to include each recipient in the building process of their own house.
