Some 500 citizens will be chosen next week at random from among thousands of applicants to receive lots of land to build houses, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced last night.
Addressing a United National Congress Monday Night Forum at the Tunapuna Hindu School, Persad-Bissessar said some 40,000 people were seeking homes and her government's new "land for the landless" programme "must be fair to all citizens, no matter religion or race or politics or space or place or gender."Everyone must have an equal chance to own a home," she said. Persad-Bissessar said next Tuesday, 10,000 of the 40,000 who have been shortlisted "will know if they have been chosen for one of the first 500 lots of land allocated under this programme."
She added: "Five hundred sealed receipt numbers, will be drawn from a transparent container that will have all 10,000 shortlisted applications.The Prime Minister said the random draw would take place in front of a public audience and on television."It is not automatic. You will be allocated a lot if your receipt is selected. There is a process of verification as you will have to meet a set criteria."
Persad-Bissessar said Government was doing all it could to address the crime problem and expressed her deepest sympathy to the mother and family of teenager Sunshine Alfred, who was murdered last week."To all the mothers and fathers who have lost loved ones, we assure you that we are working to get it right. No mother should have to go through that pain," Persad-Bissessar said.
She gave details of the proposed restructured Rapid Response Unit and said Government was buying more than 300 state-of-the-art vehicles for the police, with added technology needed to fight crime.She said 77 of those vehicles would be exclusively for the new Rapid Response Unit and 51 of them would be on 24-hour patrol."The police will be mobile all over the land, 24 hours a day, and 51 cars will be on the roads with two police officers in each vehicle," she said.
