Rhon­dor Dowlat

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) es­ti­mates that it would cost about $200 mil­lion to re­design and com­plete con­struc­tion at the two aban­doned apart­ment tow­ers in Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas.Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal told re­porters yes­ter­day af­ter an­oth­er cer­e­mo­ny to dis­trib­ute keys to 100 HDC ap­pli­cants. That cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Agos­ti­ni Build­ing, Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain.

The two hous­ing tow­ers at Ed­in­burgh 500 which had been built by the pre­vi­ous regime at a cost of $140 mil­lion were aban­doned in 2008-2009 be­cause of sev­er­al de­sign flaws.Mooni­lal de­scribed the project as a "sick project," say­ing that there were many from "re­gret­tably the Man­ning days.""There are oth­er sim­i­lar apart­ment build­ings in the North West and a hous­ing es­tate in Curepe," Mooni­lal said.

"But, we in­tend to clean up those sick projects in the next fis­cal year and com­ing years," he said, op­ti­mistic about the par­ty's chances at the Sep­tem­ber 7 polls.

Homes for prison of­fi­cers

Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said once re­quest­ed by the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, he is will­ing to meet to dis­cuss the needs of the of­fi­cers, in the con­text of se­cu­ri­ty.Over the past few days, the As­so­ci­a­tion's Pres­i­dent, Ceron Richards have raised sev­er­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly for of­fi­cers who live in crime-rid­den ar­eas. Richards said the lives of of­fi­cers are be­ing threat­ened al­most on a dai­ly ba­sis and it was cause for se­ri­ous con­cern by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

"We do have a pol­i­cy win­dow for mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. We have in­clud­ed prison of­fi­cers every week in our dis­tri­b­u­tion of homes as well. We are quite pre­pared to meet with the as­so­ci­a­tion and dis­cuss, as we did with the Fire Ser­vice and there will be a dis­tri­b­u­tion in the next few weeks for mem­bers of the Fire Ser­vice be­cause they have com­plained over the years that they were not be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed. We would be hap­py to meet with the prison of­fi­cers," Mooni­lal said.