Applying the pressure on homeowners

With 10 court orders and several stop notices on residential dwellings, the Mayor of Savannah-la-mar Bertel Moore is intent on making sure the buildings in Westmoreland are safe and within the parish council’s building regulation.

“There are several areas that we have noticed that have buildings that are in violation of our building codes. Two building officers and the municipal police are on the street inspecting buildings” Moore assured.

The mayor’s arguments came against the backdrop of the devastating earthquake which hit Hati on January 12 of this year where over 200,000 died most of whom were trapped beneath buildings which crumbled. Most of the buildings were not properly constructed with little or no steel.

He added that “our building officers have the responsibility to go out when a building is being started to ensure that the buildings are built properly so if an earthquake hits it doesn’t have the same effect as it did on Haiti”.

The no nonsense mayor charged that persons can be fined from $25,000 to up a $1 million if the fail to comply with the parish council’s building codes. Over the past three weeks the Westmoreland Parish Council has ramped up the efforts to ensure that buildings being constructed are done within the requisite codes.  Most of the structures that are in question he revealed were residential buildings and while some persons have begun to comply others were issued court orders because of repeated warnings through stop orders.

President of the Haiti-Jamaica Society Myrtha Desulme Haitian explained during a monthly meeting at the Westmoreland Parish Council that in a bid to rebuild Hati, the people must be mindful of the quality of the constructions as most of the buildings which collapsed did not have enough steel or in some cases none at all.

The earthquake she says can be considered as hope for the rebuilding of Haiti. “We must see this as an opportunity to build a new Haiti. We don’t want to build back the same dysfunctional system which existed before the earthquake,” she said.