Housing deal stalls

WESTERN BUREAU:

THE LOCAL planning authority in Trelawny is being blamed for the likely cancellation of over three quarters of a billion dollar in housing investment.

The $770 million housing deal, said National Housing Trust (NHT) parish manager, Rhyne Whittingham, had been secured and was pending the relocation of the garbage dump at Florence Hall which sits too close to the planned residential development.

The scheme was slated to be done on property located two miles outside of the capital Falmouth, on the road to Daniel Town, with the plans calling for 1,000 solutions, one third of which were houses and the others serviced lots.

The dump in its present location would sit on the border of the development. Responsibility for it falls under the Trelawny Parish Council, and a decision on what's to be done has been pending for almost a year.

The NHT parish manager said his organisation had gone through the trouble of facilitating the relocation by getting the necessary permits from the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) and the Underground Water Authority for the use of Grange as the new waste depository site. All that was needed, he said was Ministry of Local Government's approval.

He noted that the lease agreement with the owner of Grange was almost complete, as the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ), acting on behalf of the owner, had committed itself to a five-year lease agreement, requiring only the closing deal to be signed.

Mr. Whittingham said that with no word forthcoming on the dump's removal, the $770 million that was approved for the venture could not have been held indefinitely and the funds were channelled elsewhere. He added however that the housing plan was still viable and might be considered for future funding.

Chairman of the finance committee of the Trelawny Council, Councillor Claudette Jackson, is admitting the clog in the wheel by the Ministry of Local Government from which direction was sought on the course of action that would best fit into the national plan for restructuring of the island's waste disposal sites.

"On the advice of the NRCA, I was asked to communicate with the ministry as to the state of development with the new landfill dumps that are to be constructed nationally," said Mrs. Jackson. She said based on this the Council wrote to the Local Government Ministry from September of last year for its advice on what to do since landfills were to be built.

Mrs. Jackson said the Council was not prepared to take on the cost of relocation unless it was assured by the Ministry that it would not be required to abandon the Grange site at some future date, and then get saddled with a five-year lease agreement.

It is now ten month since the letter went to the Ministry.

In absolving the planning authority, Mrs. Jackson said the matter was out of the Council's hands but would continue to make contact with Local Government for its decision.

Admitting to "an acute shortage of housing" in Trelawny, she said her organisation had bent backward for the development and had to wrestle with certain organisations for the furtherance of the project.

"I want it to go on record that any development on the project is now out of the TPC's hands," said the finance committee chairman.

The last big housing development in Trelawny was done at Clarks Town approximately eight years ago.

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