Work advances on low-income housing at La Reconnaissance with $2.5 billion investment

More than $2.5 billion has been plugged into infrastructure development to support the construction of low-income housing at the La Reconnaissance scheme on the East Coast of Demerara, with work now about 50% complete on a batch of two-bedroom homes, Housing Minister Collin Croal has said.

Croal made the remarks during a site visit to the La Reconnaissance Housing Development alongside engineers from the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA). The current phase includes 69 two-bedroom flat houses, forming part of a broader plan to build 114 such units within a development designed to accommodate more than 1,700 residential lots.

The minister said the infrastructure investment covers works to prepare the area for both land allocations and house construction, as the government accelerates its affordable housing programme.

“We have invested over $2.5 billion in infrastructure work to develop La Reconnaissance, for both allocations and for the area to construct the houses,” Croal said.

He added that the project was progressing steadily and that a number of the homes had already been allocated, with beneficiaries awaiting completion.

Guyana’s government has placed housing at the centre of its development agenda, seeking to meet rising demand driven by population growth and rapid economic expansion linked to the country’s oil sector. Croal said the La Reconnaissance project is also supporting local employment, with the homes being built by small Guyanese contractors.

The housing ministry plans to scale up construction nationwide, targeting the delivery of about 40,000 houses by 2030 as demand for turnkey homes continues to grow.