Con­trac­tors and cit­i­zens de­sirous of con­struct­ing their homes and busi­ness­es will soon have their ap­pli­ca­tion process so stream­lined that the lengthy de­lays pre­vi­ous­ly en­coun­tered will soon be a thing of the past.

That’s the promise com­ing out of the Statu­to­ry Ap­provals Com­mit­tee chaired by Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, at the con­clu­sion of its meet­ing held on May 10.

“For far too long,” she said, “home­own­ers and con­trac­tors have com­plained about the in­ter­minable de­lays and bot­tle­necks they ex­pe­ri­ence in the con­struc­tion process. This is of­ten the re­sult of the en­tire process be­ing han­dled by dif­fer­ent agen­cies re­sid­ing un­der dif­fer­ent Min­istries. Mind­ful of that, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter es­tab­lished a Cab­i­net-ap­proved Com­mit­tee in 2020 to re­solve is­sues sur­round­ing the ap­proval process and to ex­pe­dite ap­pli­ca­tions once the req­ui­site cri­te­ria was met.”

The Com­mit­tee com­pris­es pub­lic sec­tor en­ti­ties with re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for reg­u­la­to­ry and statu­to­ry ap­provals, such as the Of­fices of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, the Chief State So­lic­i­tor, the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al, Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, Pub­lic Health, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency, Lands and Sur­veys, Drainage Di­vi­sion, WASA, T&TEC, and the Fire Ser­vices.

Al­so in at­ten­dance were the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry, Adri­an Leonce, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Nir­mala Ram­lo­gan, as well as Land Set­tle­ment Agency’s Chair­man, Wayne In­nis and CEO, Haz­ar Ho­sein.

Dis­cus­sions cen­tered around the var­i­ous agen­cies work­ing in tan­dem with each oth­er to avoid de­lays on projects, by en­sur­ing time­ly, ef­fi­cient and co­or­di­nat­ed use of ex­ist­ing re­sources to ex­pe­dite the ap­proval process.

Robin­son-Reg­is not­ed that both the LSA and the HDC have sev­er­al ex­ist­ing projects re­quir­ing reg­u­la­to­ry and statu­to­ry ap­provals, and as such will ben­e­fit from the co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach.

Ac­cord­ing to Robin­son-Reg­is, this whole-of-Gov­ern­ment ap­proach could very well be the game-chang­er in re­solv­ing cur­rent and fu­ture chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced by land de­vel­op­ers in this coun­try.

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