An­na-Lisa Paul

Three hours af­ter work­men be­gan de­mol­ish­ing the his­toric Greyfri­ars Church of Scot­land, Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, staff from the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day or­dered them to stop.The de­mo­li­tion crew were told to stop work and va­cate the premis­es be­cause they were op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly.The stop-work or­der was de­liv­ered by the chief build­ing in­spec­tor at the City En­gi­neer's Of­fice, De­o­raj Ram­ta­hal, just af­ter noon.

Ac­com­pa­nied by mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, along with mem­bers of the group, Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion ,and Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion staff, Ram­ta­hal read the no­tice to the ten work­ers be­fore pre­sent­ing it to them through the bars of the locked gate.Told by a po­lice­man they need­ed to va­cate the premis­es, the work­ers said they had been locked in for "safe­ty rea­sons."As the po­lice­man en­quired who had the keys, in the event that there was an emer­gency, the work­er, who said he was in charge, said they would need to con­tact the con­trac­tor, for­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple par­lia­men­tary can­di­date Rocky Gar­cia.

Ar­riv­ing short­ly af­ter, Gar­cia said he had been hired to car­ry out a health and safe­ty as­sess­ment on the build­ings, which were not struc­tural­ly sound.He said his find­ings re­vealed the build­ings were ter­mite-rid­den, con­tained as­bestos in the ceil­ing and that the con­crete used in the two pre­vi­ous restora­tions was flak­ing off.By the time the no­tice was de­liv­ered, the work­ers had al­ready re­moved the roof and ceil­ing of the manse (church hall) and had be­gun tak­ing off the gal­va­nize sheet­ing from the church roof.Gar­cia said while he in­tend­ed to abide by the or­der, he would re­port to the own­er and rel­e­vant ac­tion would be tak­en.

In­spec­tor: Noap­proval tode­mol­ish

Speak­ing with re­porters min­utes af­ter he de­liv­ered the no­tice, Ram­ta­hal said no ap­pli­ca­tion had been made to the cor­po­ra­tion for per­mis­sion to car­ry out de­mo­li­tion work on the site.Af­ter notic­ing the work­men around 9 am yes­ter­day, Ram­ta­hal said he vis­it­ed and asked to see the doc­u­ments ap­prov­ing the de­mo­li­tion but was told the own­er had them.Ram­ta­hal said at­tempts to con­tact Al­fred Galy, named as the pur­chas­er on doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted to the cor­po­ra­tion, were un­suc­cess­ful so the no­tice was pre­pared and served on the work­men.Point­ing to the locked gate, Ram­ta­hal said: "It is strange that the gate was locked be­cause up to 45 min­utes ago the gate was open. I walked in­to the site and spoke with the work­er pur­port­ed to be in charge.

Now that we have shown up with the no­tice, the gate is locked."How­ev­er, that does not de­ter us from serv­ing the no­tice and is­sues con­cern­ing the work­ers' health and safe­ty have now arisen and we will have to ad­dress that."The cor­po­ra­tion will mon­i­tor it and do our due dili­gence and see what ac­tiv­i­ties are tak­ing place here. I have spo­ken with my su­pe­ri­ors and we may have to look at oth­er mea­sures to en­sure com­pli­ance."

'Pre­serve this­land­mark'

Mem­bers of the NGO Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion, who in­clud­ed pres­i­dent Rudy­lynn Roberts, ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary Michele Ce­les­tine and ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Mar­garet Mc Dowall-Thomp­son, yes­ter­day went to Greyfri­ars to try to pre­vent fur­ther de­mo­li­tion.Ex­press­ing their grat­i­tude to the cor­po­ra­tion for the swift ac­tion to halt it, Roberts said they were con­cerned the struc­ture would now be fur­ther ru­ined by the el­e­ments."We must now find a way to get tar­pau­lins on­to the build­ing to tem­porar­i­ly pro­tect it un­til the whole thing is sort­ed out," she said, as she point­ed to the dark clouds above.

Blink­ing away tears, Roberts said her group had sub­mit­ted a dossier to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion Rodger Samuel three weeks ago, propos­ing the church be list­ed as a his­tor­i­cal site.

She said it would have formed part of the leg­endary Wood­ford Square His­toric Dis­trict, which pro­posed to trans­form the old na­tion­al li­brary in­to a mu­se­um, hous­ing mem­o­ra­bil­ia on past prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents."We just have to see what hap­pens from here," she con­clud­ed.Mc Dowall-Thomp­son ac­cused the own­er of dis­re­spect­ing the na­tion­al cul­ture, the ef­forts of the con­ser­va­tion­ists and the law.Ce­les­tine said they had pro­posed to trans­form the Greyfri­ars prop­er­ty in­to a us­able space as they had plans to turn the manse in­to a din­ner/din­ing area and the church as a the­atre space for the spo­ken word.

As the sit­u­a­tion un­fold­ed yes­ter­day, passer­by Lynette Sookoo, who works at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, said her par­ent – Es­ther Martha and Mor­ton Sookoo – were mar­ried at the church in 1957."I felt very hurt this morn­ing when I walked past and saw the de­mo­li­tion work tak­ing place. It is a land­mark in this coun­try and to think of how it is so cheap­ly go­ing to be bro­ken down, it is painful. If my moth­er were alive, she would have been very hurt and must be turn­ing in her grave right now," she added.Ac­cord­ing to records, the church site at Fred­er­ick Street was bought for �300 and the foun­da­tion stone laid in April, 1837. It was com­plet­ed at a cost of �4,858.

It was opened for pub­lic wor­ship in Jan­u­ary 1838 and was named Greyfri­ars af­ter the moth­er church in Glas­gow, Scot­land. Three years lat­er, a manse was built next to the church for its min­is­ter, the Rev Alexan­der Kennedy, who was suc­ceed­ed by the Rev George Brodie who died in 1875.In the church are memo­r­i­al tablets com­mem­o­rat­ing their work, as well as mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tio�n who fell dur­ing the two World Wars.The graves of three chil­dren lie in the church­yard.

What thelaw says

Sec­tion 164 (1),(2) and (3) of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act says: "No per­son may pull down or re­move from its site any build­ing with­in any mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty un­less, not more than 14 days and not less than two days be­fore such re­moval, he gives no­tice in writ­ing to the CEO of his in­ten­tion to pull down or re­move such build­ing."Any per­son who pulls down or re­moves any build­ing from its site, and any own­er of any such build­ing who caus­es or per­mits any build­ing to be re­moved from its site with­out hav­ing first giv­en the no­tice pre­scribed by this sec­tion is li­able to a fine of $4,000."