Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

A for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is among the elite yet to re­ceive the keys to his home at the con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar La Fortresse gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty com­plex. Four years af­ter the sod for the 93-unit unit lux­u­ry hous­ing project lo­cat­ed op­po­site the Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, Dibe was turned, the project is yet to be com­plet­ed. Ini­tial com­ple­tion date for the $193.4 mil­lion project com­pris­ing 46 town­hous­es, 38 du­plex­es and ten tri-lev­el du­plex units was to be 18 months. The two and three-bed­room town hous­es are each priced at $1.8 mil­lion. The du­plex­es are said to be with­in the range of $2.2 mil­lion, while the tri-lev­el du­plexs are priced at $2.7 mil­lion.

A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that 30 to 50 per cent de­posits have been made on 89 of the lux­u­ri­ous hous­es, with on­ly the re­main­ing four two-bed­room town­hous­es await­ing own­ers. How­ev­er, to date, doc­tors, lawyers, teach­ers and sev­er­al oth­er busi­ness­men have been forced to fork out huge rental sums while wait­ing on the lux­u­ri­ous units to be com­plet­ed. The project is a joint ven­ture be­tween the DTL Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ers Com­pa­ny Ltd and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA). It was un­der the tenure of for­mer PSA pres­i­dent, Jen­nifer Bap­tiste Primus that the union agreed to en­ter the hous­ing busi­ness with its 3.2 hectares of land.

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands the as­so­ci­a­tion ex­plored oth­er op­tions for util­is­ing the land, how­ev­er, they set­tled for the DTL part­ner­ship which was ex­pect­ed to be most fea­si­ble. At the con­struc­tion site last week, sev­er­al plas­tered un­fin­ished units were seen. Steel roofs cov­ered some units while gap­ing holes in the con­crete walls of some town­hous­es were yet to be in­stalled with win­dows. A back­hoe and con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als were seen ly­ing around the com­pound. A work­er who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said, "We are work­ing as quick­ly as pos­si­ble."

Cost over­runs

But while the project was ex­pect­ed to dou­ble the PSA's in­vest­ments, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands the de­lay and rise in the cost of ma­te­ri­als has led to cost over­runs. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it was learnt that while sev­er­al con­trac­tors have been fired from the project, oth­ers have walked off the job claim­ing fi­nan­cial strains. Gen­er­al man­ag­er of DTL Lu­cien Delpeche has ad­mit­ted that the project has been de­layed as a re­sult of "un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances," which they ex­pect to be rec­ti­fied short­ly. But even while the com­pa­ny is push­ing to have the project com­plet­ed by year's end, sev­er­al prospec­tive home­own­ers are now weigh­ing their le­gal op­tions.

Vent­ing his frus­tra­tion open­ly, for­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter, Car­los John who made a down pay­ment on a town house, said, "I made pay­ments for one of the units which I in­tend­ed to give to my daugh­ter. They have not de­liv­ered at all; it is more than four years I have been wait­ing. Both PSA and DTL fell through on their word. The project is long over­due. I am not tak­ing it nice­ly at all." An­oth­er dis­grun­tled busi­ness­man, Rod­ney Ben­jamin said he be­lieved he, like many oth­er prospec­tive home own­ers, was get­ting the run around.

"Every time you go to the com­pa­ny they have noth­ing sub­stan­tial to say at all. I made both a ten and 20 per cent down pay­ment and to date it is on­ly promis­es. The place was ex­pect­ed to fin­ish years now and noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. We are re­al­ly fed up be­cause this en­tire sit­u­a­tion is very frus­trat­ing." Al­so af­fect­ed is a doc­tor who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, claim­ing that he is now forced to fork out $US1,500 a month be­cause of the de­lay. "My wife and I, who re­cent­ly got mar­ried, found the lo­ca­tion was good so we opt­ed to make a down pay­ment. We made a down pay­ment on a two-storey town­house; we paid ten per cent when the first floor was com­plet­ed and 20 per cent when con­struc­tion of the sec­ond floor start­ed.

"We signed all our doc­u­ments and were ea­ger­ly await­ing the keys for our home. We have seen months turn in­to years and now it has be­come re­al­ly, re­al­ly frus­trat­ing. Al­most four years have passed and ba­si­cal­ly all we are see­ing on the com­pound is the shell of our dream home," the doc­tor said.