IVAN EXPOSES NEED TO ENFORCE BUILDING CODE

The relatively severe damage to several buildings in Tobago last week by Hurricane Ivan, which also destroyed thousands of houses and business places in Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines, has exposed the need for the updating and enforcing in Trinidad and Tobago of the country’s building code. Not only are buildings, both for commercial and housing use, being erected without prior planning permission, but even where permission has been granted, in all too many cases specifications, contained in plans presented by contractors to the Town and Country Planning Division and other relevant authorities and for which approval for construction was given, have been shunted aside. It is a shortsighted approach, because although thousands of dollars may be saved in the process, the eventual structures are weakened through the use of inferior materials and in the process earthquakes on a conservative level on the Richter scale, for example, which would not have affected them had approved specifications been adhered to, could severely damage the buildings.

In turn, these violations have made the buildings all the more susceptible to serious damage should a hurricane of the intensity of Ivan, or even a storm with the winds of the 1974 monster, Flora, strike urban areas in Trinidad. Flora, which hit Trinidad’s East coast, did considerable damage in Mayaro and other coastal areas in its path. In addition, buildings constructed illegally by both squatters and land owners place the occupiers and very often their neighbours at risk, and if built on hillsides using the slash and burn approach trigger problems such as soil erosion, and flooding in low lying areas during the rainy season. Houses erected lower down the hillsides are continuously at risk, and so too are houses constructed at the base of the hills. What is particularly troubling is that in the event of a hurricane, such as the one which pounded several Caribbean islands of the archipelago during the past several days, or in the event of even a storm, scores of squatters’ and other illegally constructed homes and structures whose building contractors cocked a snook at approved specifications can either be damaged or completely destroyed.

Admittedly, land prices, building costs and rents which have skyrocketed in urban and suburban areas during the past decade have resulted in an explosion both of squatting and the construction of sub-standard housing and commercial buildings. And although the authorities have tacitly yielded on the question of building standards, within the past two decades for persons who come under the Squatter Regularisation Programme, even minimum building standards do not appear to exist. Thousands will become homeless should a hurricane hit the country’s urban and suburban areas and the hillsides dotted by squatters’ homes. Events have shown that a fire breaking out in one of the ill-constructed houses, all too often put up with not much room between them, have led to several homes being destroyed and scores of residents rendered homeless.

Many of the squatters’ homes are illegally connected to the electricity supply and/or have sub-standard wiring. It is a crisis waiting to happen. I wish to emphasise that the situation did not suddenly arise under any one Government, and that squatting has been around in Trinidad and Tobago since shortly after the end of slavery. In turn, cocking a snook at building codes through deviating from approved specifications for houses and commercial buildings has been an uncomfortable factor since early in the last century or perhaps even earlier. No one Administration can be held solely responsible, and it is a monumental problem which cannot be solved during any one Government term of Office. Already several Administrations have tried, and the present Administration has sought to tackle the problem through a massive programme of construction of low cost housing.

Ultimately, the 100,000 housing units which it is hoped will be constructed by the public and private sectors within the next ten years or what have you, will see a better and stronger type of building. Already, the private sector, particularly over the past decade and a half has made an all important contribution through the provisions of hundreds of housing units. In turn, additional housing construction in areas developed over the past 40 years, by and/or targetting middle and upper middle income families, all with strict adherence to the building code, has eased the housing situation but only for special (income) groups. The challenge still remains for this and succeeding Administrations to close the housing gap and enforce, increasingly, the building code.

It is ironic that Hurricane Ivan by its destruction and severe damage to housing in Grenada and St Vincent may cause an upsurge in illegal immigration and delay the full implementation of the building code and impact adversely on Government’s plans for whittling down the existing gap between access and non-access to housing built to carefully laid down standards. I switch gears. I continue to support, unreservedly, the determined campaign by the recently retired Head of the French Department of Bishop Anstey High School, Miss Dianne Nicholls, for Cambridge University to revisit its Ungraded marking for Bishop Anstey students in the Literature component of the French examination in this year’s Advanced Level Examinations. Three of the students — Fatima Siwaju, Candice Davis and Damali Nicholls — have received Additional Scholarships, and should Cambridge revisit the markings two of them may receive Open Scholarships! The struggle continues.