NHA deploys army in ‘high risk areas’

NATIONAL HOUSING AUTHORITY (NHA) executive director Noel Garcia yesterday revealed that the security forces will be deployed in “high risk areas” in order to prevent criminal activity from resurfacing in the NHA’s new apartment refurbishment programme which begins on September 29. On Sunday, Prime Minister Patrick Manning spoke about the armed forces’ role in the new programme.

In an interview at the NHA’s South Quay headquarters minutes before a meeting with the police-army Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) at 2 pm, Garcia said the security forces will be operating in areas “where we are seeing a tendency to some kind of violence of turf warfare” such as Morvant, Laventille and Beetham. He recalled that while the first nine months of the last apartment refurbishment programme were “an unqualified success, we ran into problems when certain elements, I would say, infiltrated the programme.” Garcia said their intrusion saw “the emergence of unsavoury activities such as ghost gangs, turf wars and in some instances people claiming payment for work that was not done,” and was one of the reasons why that programme was stopped, and those elements were rooted out.

However, Garcia stressed that the police-army mission would not be one of an occupying force but one “in conjunction with the community working together to get the job done.
“So it is not a question of the army walking around with guns, or intimidating people,” the NHA executive director added. Garcia also disclosed that to improve the efficiency of the new programme, the NHA has hired three project management consulting firms at a cost of $675,000, to work together with the NHA’s technical staff to identify the areas where work remains to be done. Documents supplied to Newsday identified these areas as San Fernando, Couva, Maloney, Port-of-Spain East, Port-of-Spain Central and Port-of-Spain West. He also revealed that a training element will be incorporated into the new programme through the involvement of Army engineers and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Garcia added that the NHA and IATF will closely monitor activities to ensure there is no spillover of questionable activities from “high risk” to other areas.

According to the NHA documents, an estimated 6,000 persons will be employed in this new programme and a budget of $15 million is allocated to complete the remaining ten to 15 percent of refurbishment works left unfinished by the last programme. The new programme will run for six fortnights with each of the 6,000 persons employed for at least two fortnights during the course of the programme. Garcia said that by December 31, the NHA will have constructed 2,435 units while Udecott will construct another 1,976 units and the NHA is “on course” to helping Government achieve its goal of constructing 10,000 houses annually. He also said the NHA hopes to spend $350 million on housing in the next fiscal year and while uncertain whether this funding would come via the 2003/2004 Budget or other means, “housing is a priority.”