50-year-old man begs for home after shed collapses on Christmas Day

A 50-year-old man is pleading for approval of his house plot after his shack at Anna Catherina in West Coast Demerara collapsed at around 2am on Christmas Day.

Construction worker Ganeshram Sahobia told Stabroek News that the house, located in the government reserve near the seaside, collapsed on one side due to strong winds.

In addition to the beams in the house, it also damaged the refrigerator and television.

He said his nephew Videsh (30) and brother Bharat (63) were sleeping at home.

Videsh woke up when the wardrobe fell on the bed and injured his foot.

Bharat told him that he felt shaking and heard loud crashing noises. They tried to run to safety and realized the stairs were broken.

Sahobia has occupied the reserve for several years and is keen to move. “They were getting wet inside the house” during heavy rain.

He applied for a house plot and was interviewed in 2022. He then received a letter from the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) stating that he was entitled to a low-income housing plot.

The letter also stated that CH&PA would “contact you at a later date regarding the area and cost of land available for allocation.”

Meanwhile, regarding the reserve, he was told, “Do not build (renew), do not build until they give permission.”

Sahobia, a single father, said that he and his 14-year-old son and two daughters; Aged 10 and 12, they had gone to a ‘wake house’ for another nephew who had been killed on the East Coast of Demerara when the disaster struck.

He received a call about the incident and when he returned, he saw that the house was leaning to one side. It was heavily damaged.

With the help of his brother and kind neighbors, they tried to “tie the house down with arches to bring it down before it breaks any further.”

After that the back of the house was still leaning to one side.

A neighbor known as ‘Aunt Love’ said that when she woke up the next morning, she saw the house “on the ground” and pointed with her hands.

She helps care for the children and reiterated that during inclement weather, children are “really punishing and we have to be there for them.”

Another neighbor, Shameer Ali, said everyone on the street stepped up to help the children, especially when their father came home late from work.

Both neighbors ask Sahobia to buy the land of her house and help to build a better house for herself and her children.

Sahobia said he decided to demolish a small listed house because he could not pay the rent.

“I was working at sea at that time and sometimes I was getting beaten, sometimes I was caught well. “If you pay the rent on time, they (tenants) want to increase the rent, and when you can’t pay, they kick you out,” he said.

He lamented that he did not want to continue occupying the reserve and cause another tragedy to occur.

He wants a better life for his children, and the only way to do this is to buy his house land and move.