…applicants receive long-awaited phone call to after more than a decade

Resident of Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) on Thursday completed payments and receive their house lots located in the expanding Bath, Waterloo, and Experiment housing developments. For many, the day represented the fulfillment of a long-held dream of owning a place to call home. For years, 65-year-old Ganchamani Balkaran watched others achieve what she feared might never happen for her.

After raising six children and enduring the loss of her children’s father, she continued living in her mother’s modest home, carrying the hope that one day she too would have a place to call her own. On Thursday, as she clutched the documents confirming the allocation of a house lot at Waterloo, the emotion she had held inside for years could no longer be contained. “I feel so happy because many years ago I didn’t get through,” she said, pausing as she reflected on the long wait. “I feel so happy and so glad. I live back at my mother’s little house, and every day my family tells me I must get my own place. Now I finally get this land, and I feel so happy.”