SOLUTIONS COMING

Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced government’s intentions to undertake “a massive housing programme” very shortly.

She made the disclosure at the National Consultation on Building for Disaster Resilience at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday and noted that solutions were being sought for those persons living in squatters’ developments.

“We have a massive housing programme to undertake very shortly. We also said we would work with the people of Rock Hall and other areas in order to appropriately relocate them and to build for the times,” she added.

“There is no legislative authority for the building standards authority that has been around for 15 years and it is largely because the country has been flirting with the possibility of a tyrannical bureaucracy about to be imposed on them,” the PM opined.

Highlighting the facets of the burden of proof, she said therefore building professionals working above a certain level of value and square footage must be held accountable for the work they have produced.

“The shifting of the burden of proof will allow us to let you agree to the certification, but with a building authority that therefore will do audits to ensure that what you have certified is what you have certified, with the appropriate penalties for those who have either misled or failed to do what you had to do. But if we try to certify every single one and inspect every single building, effectively we would grind construction to a halt in this country and that is why I suspect, successive governments have never brought into law the legislation necessary to underpin the building standards authority, but we cannot ignore the public purpose that it serves,” she added.
(JMB)

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