Turn starter house into home

Moruga/ Tableland MP Dr Lovell Francis has advised recipients of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development housing and village improvement programme to take the $120,000 starter houses and transform them into homes.

Francis, who admitted to being under the effects of the cold, said it would not prevent him from “paranging” their homes to beg for a “nice” sweet bread.

He was speaking at the key distribution ceremony to 34 recipients at the 3rd Company Baptist Church, Third Company, Indian Walk Road, Moruga last Friday evening.

Housing Minister Major General (Ret’d) Edmund Dillon, who was also scheduled to attend the ceremony, was not able to attend owing to an emergency.

There were two key distribution ceremonies yesterday, the first at Todd’s Road, Mamoral on Friday morning and the second at Indian Walk.

In his remarks, Francis said his wish was for recipients to go on to complete the starter houses.

“I really want you to take it and make it yours so when ah pass ah could beg for a nice sweet bread in your nice house. Come and hit you a parang parang.

“Make it yours, beautify it, make it into a home. We built you a house, it’s your job to make it into a home. And I am a macco, I will pass and macco, allyuh know that,” he said as the audience burst into laughter.

Francis recalled five years earlier, he and the PM were walking in the constituency when the PM told him that when they were elected into government, “we would do something serious about the housing problem” in Moruga.

“In the large budget of a nation, this is really small money, but it is small money spent well. And if we could provide quality housing for all our citizens, not some, all our citizens, so that all out citizens live in conditions that we consider to be decent and of a decent quality, I think that is something all of us should promote, all of us should celebrate.”

Earlier, Land Settlement Agency CEO Hazar Hosein said the recipients would have to construct the internal walls, lay the ceiling tiles and painting of the houses.

“Make it a complete home at the end of the day.”