Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

As the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) em­barks on new hous­ing projects across the coun­try, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says a new build­ing code will be tak­en to Cab­i­net next month to en­sure all con­trac­tors ad­here to prop­er stan­dards. Mooni­lal said so af­ter tour­ing sev­er­al HDC sites in cen­tral Trinidad, in­clud­ing Roys­to­nia and Ex­change Gar­dens. HDC's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Jear­lean John, who ac­com­pa­nied Mooni­lal on the tour, found many of the hous­es un­fin­ished, even though con­trac­tors had been paid for the jobs by the last Gov­ern­ment. Asked what was be­ing done to en­sure con­trac­tors did not hood­wink the Gov­ern­ment for a sec­ond time, Mooni­lal said he planned to in­crease the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of the HDC so that pro­fes­sion­als could close­ly mon­i­tor new projects.

He al­so said meet­ings were be­ing held with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op a new build­ing code. "Last week, we held a round-ta­ble meet­ing with sev­er­al in­ter­est groups to dis­cuss the build­ing code and we have de­cid­ed to have a Na­tion­al Build­ing Code out­side of the Bu­reau of Stan­dards so that con­trac­tors could abide by that," Mooni­lal said. "We must first have Cab­i­net ap­proval to make the build­ing code a Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. "The de­vel­op­ment of a build­ing code is crit­i­cal to get qual­i­ty from con­trac­tors, both small and big. "Apart from that we al­so have to de­vel­op the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of the HDC to have high qual­i­ty peo­ple who can mon­i­tor qual­i­ty and stan­dards."

Mooni­lal said next week, HDC and Ude­cott would hold a me­dia con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. He said the HDC had been a vic­tim of un­scrupu­lous con­trac­tors. "We have had cas­es where con­trac­tors got monies up front...They were asked to build 50 hous­es and they fin­ished 34 and then mon­ey ran out and they asked for more mon­ey," he said. "There were prob­lems with qual­i­ty as well." Mooni­lal said some HDC set­tle­ments, in­clud­ing Cou­va, Roys­to­nia and Ex­change, would be com­plet­ed be­fore Christ­mas and de­serv­ing fam­i­lies would be giv­en their new homes. He al­so said $750 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments had al­ready been made to con­trac­tors.