Dege says no to eviction

 THE eviction of tenants from National Housing Corporation-owned properties will soon be a thing of the past, managing director John Dege says.

He told The National yesterday that would come on line with the emergence of the Durham Farm Housing Estate, outside Port Moresby, and was in line with instructions from Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

“Because housing is a self-financing institution we have always gone out evicting people, we have evicted so many Papua New Guineans,” Dege said.

“We have sold off most of our properties, sometimes not to current tenants but to people who are willing to pay cash. This is just to maintain our operational costs. We are self-funding, we have cannibalised all our properties and we can’t do that anymore.

“Durham Farm is taking place; by next month we will be fully-operational.

“Once Durham Farm picks up, we will never evict anybody from Government houses in the country.

“All we need to do is put in place a soft policy, whereby we will assist them through Government initiatives like the K400 million parked in the bank and other schemes.

“There are a number of giveaway schemes where the Government pays ‘X’ amount of money before we transfer the titles. 

“We’d like to give away all the houses free-of-charge. We can’t continue to put our people on the streets.

“When Durham Farm is in full operation we will no longer evict anybody in this country.”