The Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) will spend over $100M on corrective works to core homes built by contractors under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration, according to Board Chairman Hamilton Green.
And as works on the turn-key homes resume, standards for works are being developed by the CH&PA to guide contractors.
“Bad roofs, leaking roofs, walls that are twisted, paint peeling, septic tanks porous, floors that were doing a special dance, among other things,” was how Green yesterday described some of the defects found.
During questioning at a press conference, Green requested that members of management of the CH&PA attend to deal with the respective issues. However, he was told that no member of management was available.
Veteran engineer and CH&PA Board member Bert Carter explained that of 200 core homes in the Perseverance, East Bank of Demerara New Housing Scheme, 59 were completed but only 45 of those were occupied.
He said that while there have been complaints from nearly all of the homeowners in occupancy, there were 13 homes in particular where serious corrective works have to be undertaken.
Carter pointed out that the problem is not with designs of the homes but with the construction works undertaken to build them.
As a result, he said that he and CH&PA engineers are working on putting together a standards code for works to be done in the future.
“First of all, when you are going to church everyone sings out of the same hymn book and I think one of the problems is these contractors who are given houses to build didn’t have the same hymnal, the same practice and so everybody has a different standard,” he said.
“I want to be very fair to the young engineers. Each contractor will have what he considers to be his standard, so we are trying to write standards. We are trying to get one for the electrical. I’m trying to get one for the plumbing and so on, so that anybody that is doing work on that site will have the same standards to follow,” he added.
Green yesterday reiterated what he had told Stabroek News in an interview about plans for making the housing sector better.
These include that homeowners will be given a chance to interface with the contractors of their turn-key homes and request modifications, as the Board decided to terminate the government’s system of supplying building materials to contractors because of mismanagement.
“All in all, we are attempting to retool… We asked the authorities to have dialogue with the groups when work is started, so that once the persons are identified for a particular area, they can meet the contractors,” Green had said.
“When I took over as Chairman, I was very concerned about the low quality of workmanship and materials on many of these so-called turn-key houses. With the other board members, we have proposed a halt so that there will be development of a new plan.
Right now, we will only permit the completion of homes which already [are] halfway or three-quarters’ way complete .We found instances where homes were not occupied because of complaints by the potential homeowners and their families of poor quality work. I am telling you, from walls cracking before completion, floors, doors, everything.
So we put a halt on any expansion to allow us to come up with a new regime, a new modus operandi that should save us from the misuse of funds so that the home owners are the real beneficiaries and not a group of persons with certain connections,” he added.
He said evidence showed that the work was poor and it was not limited to the houses as roads were also of a poor quality, with inferior materials used as the base.
