Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is mov­ing to stop the con­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial church on the Heights of Gua­napo that has been linked to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Ac­cord­ing to Winifred David, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the cor­po­ra­tion, no­tice would be served for con­struc­tion of The Light of the Light House of the Lord Je­sus Christ to be halt­ed, since no ap­proval was giv­en by the cor­po­ra­tion for the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar build­ing to be erect­ed. "The usu­al pro­ce­dure is to give them no­tice, ask­ing them why the de­vel­op­ment is con­tin­u­ing...af­ter that there is a process of sev­en days, if they do not stop the work, we then come back to coun­cil and get an or­der for de­mo­li­tion," David told the Guardian yes­ter­day, af­ter the statu­to­ry meet­ing of the cor­po­ra­tion.

"It kind of helps them to stop them from go­ing ahead with de­vel­op­ment un­less they get the nec­es­sary ap­proval," she said. David said no­tice would be served on the con­trac­tors at the site of the project be­fore the end of the month. "The let­ter has not been de­liv­ered as yet... soon...be­fore the end of the week, I sup­pose," she said. "I have a per­son who has to re­port it to me and when I get that doc­u­ment, I will sign off on it," she said. The church has been gen­er­at­ing much at­ten­tion since Op­po­si­tion chief whip Jack Warn­er raised con­cerns about it at last week Fri­day's sit­ting of the Low­er House. It was al­leged that the church was be­ing built, us­ing state re­sources in an im­prop­er man­ner to fa­cil­i­tate Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er or seer­woman Rev Ju­liana Pe­na, al­so known as Ju­liana Pierre De­venish.

David re­it­er­at­ed that no doc­u­men­ta­tion from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion was re­ceived for the church to be erect­ed. "(For) any build­ing de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try, the first re­spon­der is the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Di­vi­sion)," she said. "When they ap­prove it, it then comes to us (the cor­poar­tion) and we give fi­nal per­mis­sion or fi­nal ap­proval and the per­son or per­sons go ahead and build," David said. "We have re­ceived noth­ing as yet so we can­not say whether they have any­thing at (the) Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Di­vi­sion)...and fol­low­ing the process that we know should have hap­pened, it should have here and then af­ter­wards they would have giv­en them their per­mit be­cause we are re­spon­si­ble for the in­tegri­ty of the struc­tures." When asked about the church be­ing con­struct­ed il­le­gal­ly, David re­spond­ed: "Based on what I just ex­plained to you, it would be that."