Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

More than $50 mil­lion will have to be spent to build re­tain­ing walls around cracked HDC homes in sev­er­al parts of South Trinidad, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day. He was speak­ing with re­porters af­ter tour­ing sev­er­al of the HDC sites, in­clud­ing Welling­ton Gar­dens, Hill­crest Gar­dens, Tar­o­dale Gar­dens, Corinth Hills, Re­trench and Ridge­wood Gar­dens. Some of the hous­es had poor foun­da­tions which had moved as much as six inch­es from the plumb­ing be­cause of soil shifts.

At Welling­ton Gar­dens, sev­en hous­es were bad­ly cracked. The cen­tral sew­er sys­tem al­so was af­fect­ed by the soil shifts and Mooni­lal said no geo-tech­ni­cal sur­veys were done on the sites be­fore con­struc­tion was or­dered by the PNM Gov­ern­ment. "It seems the past Gov­ern­ment has re­al­ly left us in a mess. This is worst than I thought be­cause these hous­es are mov­ing six inch­es every year. The walls are crack­ing. There is van­dal­ism and theft," Mooni­lal said. He said Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about the safe­ty of the hous­ing units and added that he planned to make a pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net to re­duce the cost of the homes in light of the de­fects.

With re­gards to con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, Mooni­lal said he planned to re­vis­it the ex­ist­ing con­tracts and re-ex­am­ine the ex­clu­sion claus­es. "It seems that over the years the con­tracts have not been prop­er­ly re­viewed with re­gards to the li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od. We will have to look at the ex­clu­sion claus­es of the con­tracts be­cause we had a sit­u­a­tion where the con­trac­tors were re­spon­si­ble for the hous­es but not the lands or the drainage," Mooni­lal said. He warned that con­trac­tors who were hired to build more HDC hous­es would have to show their track record.

"We are not about mak­ing con­trac­tors or ex­per­i­ment­ing with house-build­ing. This time around I want to warn con­trac­tors that they bet­ter build strong hous­es," Mooni­lal said. Mean­while, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of HDC Jear­lene John said there were over 8,000 hous­es to be dis­trib­uted. She said HDC was not per­fect and much of the de­fec­tive works were caused by the way the con­struc­tion was scoped ini­tial­ly. John said the HDC was work­ing quick­ly to ful­fil the de­mands for hous­ing and in so do­ing there were some over­sight on sys­tems.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Agos­ti­ni In­dus­tries, Dar­ren Has­sanali, told Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal mil­lions of dol­lars were spent in cor­rec­tive works at Welling­ton Gar­dens, Debe. De­spite the works, sev­en of the hous­es were mov­ing be­cause of an un­sta­ble soil shifts. Has­sanali met with Mooni­lal dur­ing a tour yes­ter­day. Mooni­lal sought to get an­swers and said he was sat­is­fied that while the hous­es were struc­tural­ly sound, the land was un­sta­ble.

Has­sanali said ge­ot­ech­ni­cal con­sul­ta­tions were un­able to pre­dict the soil shifts. He said dur­ing con­struc­tion there was noth­ing to in­di­cate that the soil would shift. A com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment was be­ing done of the en­tire area, fol­low­ing which mil­lions of dol­lars would have to be spent to con­struct re­tain­ing walls, Has­sanali said.