ST. GEORGE'S, GRENADA, Tuesday February 10, 2015 - GIS:  Social Development and Housing Minister Hon. Delma Thomas has dismissed opposition claims that the New National Party administration is using the Chinese Housing Project at Mt. Gay to pad the voters' list.

During Tuesday’s weekly post cabinet media briefing, Minister Thomas said many of the people selected for the housing project were chosen by the former administration.

“If you are the one that selected most of the persons, and if you look at the list that said preselected by the former committee and most of these persons are part of the housing project, then one would try to think whether or not that was the intention of the former administration,” said Minister Thomas.

“If all the persons that are going there are persons who you pre-selected before then I would wonder whether or not their mindset, their thought process was to pad the list so that they would be able to win the last elections”.

A previous Keith Mitchell government negotiated the housing units after Hurricane Ivan ravaged the country’s housing stocks.

However, the previous Tillman Thomas administration did not keep its end of the bargain to fund the construction of supporting drainage, roads and electricity.

Within weeks of assuming the role of housing minister, Thomas successfully negotiated with the Chinese government to fund the supporting facilities.

“Nothing happened after the Chinese government did their part and those houses were abandoned,” recalled Minister Thomas.

“So if you were really serious about distributing those houses for needy persons you are now talking about, then how come you were not even able to strike a negotiation? And you wait until another government comes in power to go back to the Chinese”.

The Government recently signed a new agreement for the construction of 600 additional housing units that will form part of the second batch of Chinese low income housing while another 1000 units are in the pipeline.