Sascha Wil­son

De­mo­li­tion of the al­most cen­tu­ry-old San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court build­ing has been tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo ex­plained on Tues­day that de­mo­li­tion was halt­ed be­cause the job re­quires an ex­ca­va­tor with a hy­draulic ham­mer. He said the equip­ment has since been sourced but it has to un­der­go re­pairs.

The de­mo­li­tion be­gan on Ju­ly 23 as part of the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry’s #We Clean TT Cam­paign, but less than a quar­ter of the build­ing has been torn down.

The court build­ing on Har­ris Street was “tem­po­rar­i­ly” closed in Sep­tem­ber 2017 and the five court­rooms were re­lo­cat­ed to the Mad­i­nah Build­ing and the San Fer­nan­do High Court for a month, to fa­cil­i­tate ur­gent ceil­ing re­pairs and as­be­stos clean­ing.

The Ju­di­cia­ry then ex­tend­ed the clo­sure to No­vem­ber 13, 2017, but not­ed that even af­ter the roof re­pairs were com­plet­ed, mi­nor works would still have to be done.

Work start­ed on the old build­ing but then stopped and it de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. In 2020, prison in­mates as­sist­ed in phase one of the de­mo­li­tion.

In the re­lease in Jan­u­ary this year, the Ju­di­cia­ry stat­ed, “Giv­en the pan­dem­ic and the fact the de­mo­li­tion could not be done by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port , due to fac­tors that im­pact their im­ple­men­ta­tion of the project, the Ju­di­cia­ry has sought al­ter­na­tive means of ex­e­cut­ing the de­mo­li­tion project.”

While fam­i­ly and traf­fic mat­ters are be­ing heard at the Mad­i­nah Build­ing, the oth­er mag­is­trates’ courts are still op­er­at­ing from the High Court. How­ev­er, the build­ing has since been the sub­ject of sev­er­al com­plaints by the pub­lic, who deem it an eye-sore and safe­ty haz­ard. ­