Shal­iza Has­sanali

The chron­ic short­age for stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion in and around the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine cam­pus has led to one land­lord con­vert­ing freight con­tain­ers in­to apart­ments to house stu­dents. This is now the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by UWI's prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat. The con­struc­tion of the con­tain­ers was raised at a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion for land­lords at UWI on June 26, which was at­tend­ed by Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim, St Au­gus­tine MP and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, di­rec­tor of UWI's Stu­dent Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices (SAS) Deirdre Charles, pres­i­dent of UWI's Stu­dent Guild Hillan More­an and Sankat. Karim and Ra­mad­har im­me­di­ate­ly act­ed on the in­for­ma­tion by vis­it­ing the site of the 21 one-bed­room apart­ments at Bidassie Street fol­low­ing the con­sul­ta­tion. How­ev­er, they were greet­ed by a locked gal­vanised gate at the back en­trance of the prop­er­ty. From the road­way, the min­is­ters saw the con­tain­ers stacked on three lev­els.

$3,000 for an apart­ment

Last Wednes­day, a Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion led us to Evans Street, the front en­trance of the prop­er­ty, where this re­porter was al­lowed to view the in­com­plete apart­ments by a work­man. Ex­plain­ing that the con­tain­ers were pur­chased from the port, the work­er said the apart­ments are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by years' end and will cost $3,000 each, elec­tric­i­ty in­clud­ed. Each apart­ment will be tiled, equipped with air-con­di­tion, a kitch­enette, and of­fers hot and cold wa­ter. Its ex­te­ri­or will be lined with sty­ro­tex and plas­tered with ce­ment to in­su­late the heat from the steel box­es. For ca­ble tv and In­ter­net, the ten­ant will have to pay more. There is, how­ev­er, on­ly one en­trance in each con­tain­er apart­ment. This re­porter was in­vit­ed to view one of the apart­ments which was al­most com­plete af­ter she told a work­man at the site that she was in search of ac­com­mo­da­tion for her daugh­ter who would be at­tend­ing UWI at the start of the new term.

He was a bit skep­ti­cal and asked if the re­porter was an of­fi­cial from UWI. At the con­sul­ta­tion, a man who said he was from the area, brought the mat­ter of the con­tain­ers which were be­ing pre­pared for the stu­dents to the uni­ver­si­ty's at­ten­tion, say­ing it was a safe­ty risk and haz­ard. The work­man, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed they would be cater­ing for work­ing class peo­ple, but if stu­dents are in­ter­est­ed they can rent. Up­on leav­ing, the work­man iden­ti­fied the land­lord (a name giv­en), who had just pulled up in­to the dri­ve­way. The man in­sist­ed he want­ed work­ing peo­ple for the apart­ments. Res­i­dents be­lieve the men are mak­ing an about turn as the mat­ter has been brought in­to the open and is now the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

LEFT: Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim. Pho­to: Shirley Ba­hadur

Karim: It's wor­ry­ing, we will act

Karim, speak­ing at his St James of­fice on Fri­day, ad­mit­ted he had in­struct­ed SAS, through Sankat, to con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the fa­cil­i­ty and re­port to him with­in one to two weeks. "I am sure the uni­ver­si­ty will in­ves­ti­gate and ad­vise us ac­cord­ing­ly. As soon as we get the re­port we will act on it. I can as­sure you that." A past stu­dent of UWI, Karim stat­ed that a fa­cil­i­ty like that would not es­cape the pub­lic glare. "Peo­ple will raise is­sues see­ing a fa­cil­i­ty like that. When we re­ceive the re­port from UWI we will make sure that the au­thor­i­ties are ad­vised in this re­gard." Karim said SAS would alert new and re­turn­ing stu­dents about the con­tain­ers. Karim said this was the first time he had seen con­tain­ers con­vert­ed in­to apart­ments in all the years he had at­tend­ed UWI.

He con­fessed the mat­ter was a wor­ry­ing con­cern. "This is a new phe­nom­e­non which we are go­ing to be look­ing very close­ly at." Karim said he had asked UWI to take lead­er­ship in con­sti­tut­ing a com­mit­tee which will have over­sight for stu­dents' ac­com­mo­da­tion. The com­mit­tee, Karim said, will make up stake­hold­ers from all the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the stu­dents' guild.

No ap­proval from TPRC

Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) Pa­tri­cia Mejias yes­ter­day said as far as she was aware no ap­proval was grant­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion for the con­struc­tion of these apart­ments. Mejias promised to have build­ing in­spec­tors vis­it the site to­mor­row to find out if the land­lord was grant­ed ap­proval by Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (TCP). She ad­mit­ted that the land­lord could have ob­tained ap­proval from TCP with­out their knowl­edge. If for some rea­son the land­lord did not ob­tain ap­proval from TCP, the cor­po­ra­tion would have to step in and serve him a show cause no­tice, al­low­ing him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to present his build­ing plan. Fail­ure to do so, Mejias said, the land­lord will be forced to de­mol­ish the struc­ture. "If he fails to do that we will have to step in and take ac­tion." Mejias ad­mit­ted that leg­is­la­tion with re­gards to build­ing struc­tures need­ed to be changed.

Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion:

In­spec­tion nec­es­sary

Pres­i­dent of the con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Mikey Joseph said con­tain­ers have been used be­fore in con­struc­tion sites and res­i­dences. "Once they are prop­er­ly as­sem­bled, fas­tened, weld­ed and bolt­ed they should safe­ly house peo­ple for a short term." If the con­tain­ers are used for long term, Joseph said, it must be in­spect­ed, ren­o­vat­ed and re­in­forced. How­ev­er, Joseph not­ed that us­ing con­tain­ers for dwelling will re­quire ap­proval.

Pro­fes­sion­als en­gi­neers:

One en­trance will be risky

Richard Saun­ders, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers, said if the con­tain­er has one en­trance this could pose as a prob­lem for the oc­cu­pants should a fire break out. Saun­ders said if the con­tain­ers were cut and were not prop­er­ly re­in­forced, this could com­pro­mise its struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty. "It can cause dam­age in an earth­quake. But it all de­pend on how it was done."