Six­teen peo­ple had their dreams of own­ing a home re­alised yes­ter­day when the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) hand­ed over the keys to new home own­ers at Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co. The cer­e­mo­ny marked the start of oc­cu­pa­tion of Phase four of the HDC's hous­ing de­vel­op­ment project. Al­though 218 hous­ing units, which start­ed in Jan­u­ary, 2007, have been com­plet­ed, Emi­ly Dick-Forde, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment said the re­main­ing 202 own­ers were com­plet­ing the nec­es­sary process­es with the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance and the HDC be­fore they could be giv­en the keys to their new homes.

She said a sec­ondary school, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and a nurs­ery school were al­so ex­pect­ed to be con­struct­ed in the area. The min­is­ter said over the next three weeks, hun­dreds of cit­i­zens were ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed keys to their new homes, as ma­jor projects were un­der­way in Tu­na­puna, San Juan and Ch­agua­nas. She said Gov­ern­ment had been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure that 7,700 new homes were built be­fore the end of the year: "By Oc­to­ber, we hope to com­plete a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of these hous­es."

Dick-Forde said pro­vid­ing af­ford­able hous­ing to cit­i­zens of T&T re­mained on Gov­ern­ment's front burn­er: "In some re­gions of the world, that is not so, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis. Many coun­tries have no so­cial agency to pro­vide hous­ing to those most in need." A So­cial Hous­ing Pol­i­cy, she said, was soon to come on stream to re­move home­less per­sons from the streets:

"We have quite a num­ber of per­sons who have tran­si­tioned from be­ing home­less to some of the fa­cil­i­ties that the so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­istry has and they have found jobs for them. They are now ready to go on their own. In or­der for them to do that, we have to pro­vide them with rental ac­co­mo­da­tion." Al­so present was HDC's act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Louis Nurse who en­cour­aged the new home own­ers to work to­geth­er with the cor­po­ra­tion for the main­te­nance of the new hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

Break down

The site com­pris­es:

�2 150 acres vest­ed in Ude­cott by Ca­roni Lim­it­ed.

�2 150 units con­struct­ed in phase 1a for the re­lo­ca­tion of per­sons for ac­com­mo­da­tion of the ex­pan­sion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port Ter­mi­nal.

�2 The phase 1b was for the con­struc­tion of an ad­di­tion­al 53 units.

�2 The to­tal area of phas­es 1a and 1b com­prised 46 acres.

�2 The re­main­ing 104 acres were trans­ferred to the HDC for the con­struc­tion of hous­ing units.

Con­tracts award­ed to:

�2 In­ter­na­tion­al En­gi­neer­ing Con­sor­tium Lim­it­ed (IEC) in the sum of $431, 579,136 for the con­struc­tion of 128 apart­ment units.

�2 West At­lantic Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, (WA­CL) in the sum of $158,043,381.85 for the con­struc­tion of 256 town­hous­es and 216 apart­ment units (472 units).

�2 NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Lim­it­ed was award­ed a con­tract in the sum of $156, 212,539 for the con­struc­tion of 294 town­hous­es and 280 apart­ments units (574 units).