?The man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Jear­lean John has dis­missed sug­ges­tions Gov­ern­ment was ac­cel­er­at­ing its hous­ing pro­gramme to pad vot­ers in their favour for lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. She said it would be an er­ro­neous state­ment to claim Gov­ern­ment's hous­ing projects were be­ing ramped up to co­in­cide with lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, which were re­quired to be held be­fore Oc­to­ber 13. She added, "There was a hous­ing pro­gramme be­fore, a very ro­bust hous­ing pro­gramme I must say. I do not think that would be a fair state­ment at all." John said the HDC had a data­base of more than 130,000 ap­pli­cants for Gov­ern­ment hous­es.

At the sec­ond PNM meet the con­stituents meet­ing on Mon­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment be­gan to ac­cel­er­ate its hous­ing pro­gramme again. Man­ning said the first pri­or­i­ty was to com­plete all hous­es ei­ther un­der con­struc­tion or un­com­plet­ed and dis­trib­ute them be­tween June and Ju­ly. He added that the sec­ond pri­or­i­ty was to restart the hous­ing con­struc­tion pro­gramme and "ramp it up in the short­est pos­si­ble time" to 8,000 hous­es each year.