Government has no-one else to blame but itself if it is now claiming guest workers are responsible for squeezing the tight housing market at both ends of the scale.

That?s the view of United Bermuda Party deputy leader Michael Dunkley who has responded to remarks made by Housing Minister David Burch last week in which he referred to foreign workers snapping up high-end accommodation and also lower paid guest workers competing for cheaper rental accommodation at the bottom end of the market.

In a speech to the Hamilton Rotary Club, Sen. Burch also expressed the opinion that, with the current construction boom now continuing beyond ten years without cooling off it might be time to ?look at instituting a moratorium on certain new builds to bring this unbridled expansion into check.?

He explain that, in some cases, construction workers were cramming into accommodation units in numbers that would be unacceptable to Bermudians.

But UBP Shadow Minister Without Portfolio Mr. Dunkley said: ?This Government is very adept at laying the blame at any doorstep other than its own. Minister Burch has got up and blamed the expat workforce for the housing shortage.

?I understand that they are needed in Bermuda and our business would not function without these people, and those at the other end of the (pay) scale are out there doing the jobs that our people don?t want.?

He said: ?The Minister comes out and criticises these people when it is his Government that is the one issuing the work permits. A light should have gone on in their heads and said to them that there is a housing situation that needs to be addressed.

?This Government has failed to deliver on housing. It has let six or seven years go by ? that is the problem.?

Mr. Dunkley said the UBP Government of the mid 1990s had slowed the housing building programmes to so that it could be seen what impact new properties freed up by the reclamation of the Baselands would have on the Island?s housing market. But since the PLP came to power in 1998 it had not stepped up the housing programme leading to the current shortage, he said.

The Government had not shown ?proper planning? such as intervening sooner to cool an overheating construction boom by pulling back on public projects.

It would now find it hard to do so, he claimed, with public works such as the new courthouse and the Causeway among projects looming.

And Mr. Dunkley said Sen. Burch had been offensive to many good landlords when he referred to ?greedy landlords? pushing up accommodation prices to cash in on the affluence being generated by high-flying guest workers who have housing allowances.

?I?m sure most landlords are simply following the economic laws of supply and demand,? he said.

And UBP Shadow Housing Minister Kim Swan said: ?It is on their (PLP) watch that things have become adverse for Bermudians.?