By: Spokesman Newsroom
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (Thursday 28th November 2024)-Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Sustainable Development Sherilita ‘Shez’ Dore-Tyson has highlighted a growing trend of young people taking an active interest in land ownership.
During her appearance on the weekly ‘In Focus’ programme-hosted by the St.Kitts and Nevis Information Service-aired Wednesday 27th November 2024, she made such a data-driven observation as part of the themed discussion of ‘COP29 Insights and the Path to Sustainability’ when quizzed about land management.
Dore-Tyson pointed to census data revealing a demographic shift in attitudes toward land ownership.
“Well, in terms of the data we have, we have a young population, and young people are more land conscious than our seniors were back in the day. So now, I think we have over 2, 224,” she said.
She continued: “For a 68 square mile island, that is quite a challenge to meet the needs of all of these people. As a matter of fact, if you realize, 2,224-that’s a town. That’s a new town. So it’s almost like a new community waiting to be established.
The Permanent Secretary underscored the Ministry’s efforts to address the challenges posed by this surge in demand through equitable and accessible land distribution programmes.
“We had to find creative ways to ensure that land distribution is equitable, it’s accessible, and we can do it in a fair way. We are not discriminating, but clearly we can’t just do it across the board like that. she said.
Dore-Tyson went on to outline several initiatives tailored to meet the needs of various demographic groups.
“And so we have a number of programmes, for example, a young professionals programme. We are building the middle class. Again, this is based on statistics that we would have received,” she noted. The programme targets individuals who are ready to build and are financially capable. “We have over 100 persons who have received land so far under that programme.”
The Ministry is also seeing increased interest from specific occupational groups, including the military and police.
“We have a number of persons from the military and the police, the army, and so we are working as well with that group,” Dore-Tyson said.
Additionally, she spoke about another trend being the growing demand among men, a group Dore-Tyson described as previously underrepresented in land applications.
“The men are coming forward, and they’re saying to me, ‘PS, what happened to us?’ These are the bus drivers, the construction workers, the men who are working on the street, the men who are working maybe in factories,” she explained.
As gathered, in response to such feedback, the Ministry plans to make men a focus of land distribution efforts in 2025.
“We have the young professionals, we have the military, we have women because, you know, women carry the families. We’re going to include men and some other subsets so we can start to spread it across as many aspects of the population as possible and as many demographics as possible.”