About 68 poor families received free houses commissioned by Skerrit in Portsmouth. Free houses with complete residential amenities were given to 24 families with 44 others who were given commitment letters will have their own houses by the first week of December. The housing hand-over ceremony was attended by government cabinet ministers, DLP candidates, the Mayor of Portsmouth and hundreds of other people.
While the 24 recipients received keys to their own houses in Georgetown together with their Certificates of Title, the same hand-over ceremonies took place in Bellevue Chopin, Pointe Michel and the Kalinago Territory.
Prime Minister Skerrit said more than 5,000 would have been constructed and given free to Dominicans last year, but cheap materials and plywood would have been used and these are not resilient; so the government abandoned mass housing construction and decided to take it gradually – because the people deserve more, Skerrit revealed. Over EC$350,000 were expended in constructing each house with funding generated by the CBI programme.
“I understand the feeling of not having a home to come home to, and I understand my people who belong to the poorest of the poor, that deserve a safe and beautiful home too,” Skerrit said. “Today, you will sleep in your new rooms tonight, and we will build more and give more, one key at a time.”
Skerrit said the new houses are powered by underground power cables with solar water heaters available for the use of the residents.
“When you look around, you will see no electrical lines running across streets, all of them are underground,” he said. “In the event of a hurricane and the power station is down, we can come here to plug in a generator and you will be the first to have power in Portsmouth. We have also installed solar water heaters for you. We are not just giving you a house; we are giving you a home. You can bequeath it to your children so that when you leave this earth, you will know that your children will have a home of their own.”
A very grateful house recipient, Dion Laurent Mathew, appreciated the DLP administration for the Glanvillia Housing Project, saying “I slept with my child in a one-room bed, I prayed, I wept, and now it has finally happened.”
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