Life Over Votes - Holness To Squeal On Rogues Building In Danger Zones, Willing To Suffer Hit At Polls

By: Admin

Image caption: Photo by Jason Cross Gaylia Catwell watches as a workman sets out tyres and steel in a makeshift bid to shore up her backyard and the foundation of her house in Lindo’s Gap, St Andrew East Rural, last Thursday.

Member of Parliament Juliet Holness has threatened to report residents in St Andrew East Rural who construct homes in contravention of the law and warned that she would be willing to suffer the consequences of losing electoral support.

Holness’ seat was hit hard last week by flooding triggered by heavy rains associated with then Tropical Storm Zeta, sparking landslides, road damage, and the deaths of two persons. The national toll on roads, bridges, and agriculture has cleared $3 billion.

Urgings to evacuate from cliffside dwellings have caused her to get flak, Holness said, but she warned that sandy and shaly soil could not support concrete structures.

“I saw one in Marl Road, and I spoke to them, and I told the community members that if they build a concrete structure, contact me immediately. I will be going back to check.

“I have seen areas where people are building on the hillside, and they are obviously squatting. I have no problems reporting them to the KSAMC, and I don’t care if they vote for me, yes or no,” Holness told The Gleaner on Friday, referring to the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation.

The KSAMC has begun land assessments in the constituency to determine what level or type of construction can take place in specific areas and to order the removal of persons deemed to be in danger.

The corporation has also embarked on a programme that allows persons who previously undertook unapproved construction to submit plans under an amnesty, said Holness.

The St Andrew East Rural MP invoked bald pragmatism in questioning the worth of multimillion-dollar expenditure in communities with small populations. Her comments represent rare candour by a parliamentary representative of a mainly rural, hilly constituency with many sparsely distributed districts.

“I said to them that they have to look at relocation as an option because if 50 people live in a community, it is not practical for the Government to spend $350 million to fix the roads going there or to fix a breakaway. Limited resources means you have to make decisions of priority, and where far more people live and far more Jamaicans use facilities, that is where the Government is going to spend money first,” Holness told The Gleaner.

Her forceful stance converges with the message of Prime Minister Andrew Holness, her husband, who said last Tuesday in Parliament that the Government would seek to declare no-build zones in at-risk communities.

But Mrs Holness faces a dilemma as swathes of her vast constituency, such as Shooters Hill, Bull Bay, Dallas, Mavis Bank, Kintyre, and Lindo’s Gap, are prone to flooding and landslides. And the political backlash of multiple marginal communities – like Somerset, where residents had accused her of not visiting them for more than three years after her 2016 election - can snowball into a mountain of discontent.

Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, colleague member of parliament for the sprawling St Andrew West Rural seat, has a similar view.

She said that “most of these rural parts are tracks, not roadways”, suggesting that state funds had to be deployed as efficiently as possible.

“Are you going to build a bridge where there are 10 people living, or are you going to prioritise building a bridge where 500, 600, or 1,000 people live and then find another solution for those 10 persons?

“Everybody is a priority. However, you have to be pragmatic about it and think about all that is involved before we make a decision because we have scarce resources,” said Cuthbert-Flynn, who, like Mrs Holness, is a second-term MP.

Economist Dr Damien King criticised the prime minister and others on the relocation rhetoric, arguing on the weekend that the poor squatted on marginal land because of poverty, not stupidity.

CEO of the National Works Agency, E.G. Hunter, told The Gleaner that housing in disaster-prone areas has proved to be a “recurring decimal”.

“The country needs to organise settlement patterns in a more rational way so that people have place to live, but the costs associated in making these locations habitable should not be disproportionate to the cost in other areas. Just about any place on Earth can be engineered to be safe for habitation. However, what is the cost for that, and who is going to pay for it?” asked Hunter.

But while the policymakers sound off, Gaylia Catwell, whose family of nearly 60 live in several homes near a precipice in Lindo’s Gap, St Andrew East Rural, is scrambling to stave off the threat of her home slipping into oblivion after landslides swallowed most of her backyard a week ago.

The family has sourced steel and dozens of tyres as they improvise to fend off danger.

“I had to charter a truck, and I picked up tyres from Papine to Barbican and back here because water is still washing the land from under the house, and it is still sliding,” Catwell told The Gleaner.

“I am trying to catch back underneath the house so everything don’t go down. We plan to go all the way down, but when I was digging this morning, there was still a lot of water in the ground. I don’t know what will happen if rain starts again”

jason.cross@gleanerjm.com