BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – PRIME MINISTER and Minister of Lands the Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas said lands that were distributed under the Special Land Distribution Initiative (SLDI), which are yet to be developed, would be repossessed by the government and redistributed.
The nation was informed of the move on Tuesday (Oct. 30) during Dr. Douglas’s radio programme ‘Ask the Prime Minister’.
He explained that the original plan for the SLDI – which was launched in 2007 - was that a total of 500 acres of land would have been distributed to suitably qualified applicants at a special rate. He however said that because of the demand, the amount of land which has been distributed equals approximately 900 acres.
Dr. Douglas declared that difficulty arises where down payment for some of the land has not yet been made, some were not surveyed and some not being put to use.
“But we’ve made an observation as well that a lot of the land we had allocated, the land has not really been touched. A lot of people have been allocated land, a lot of people have made the initial down payment, some people have not even done that. And we are in the process of doing a reassessment of the programme, identifying those lands which have been allocated and for which there has not been any response so that they can be reallocated accordingly.
“Maybe people are not yet ready...we understand. And so we may want to shift to other persons so that the government may be able to pursue its own programme for development.”
Dr. Douglas admitted however that the government is to bear some of the blame for the lack of development of these pieces of land.
“Remember the idea is not just to distribute land. The idea is to have the land developed and to a large extent. Because of the financial situation that we have found ourselves in, the government was not able to – in several cases – put the infrastructure into these lands and so we had not encouraged development in some ways. But we realise that a lot of people however had not made any effort.”
With both the government and landowners sharing the blame, Dr. Douglas informed that infrastructural development is taking place in those areas where evidence of effort by landowners exists.
“Those efforts which have been made have been documented and we are now putting in the infrastructure in those areas where we have seen people making serious attempts, having gone to the bank, having done the plans, having been approved from the Development Control and Planning Board and those areas which we know are ready for people to build, we are putting in the infrastructure as we speak today.”
