Chairman of the National Building Code Committee Melvyn Sankies says that the Government has not been pushing for the further development of building codes with vigour even though some of the standards have to be further refined or revised.
These codes have taken on heightened importance with the prevalence of flooding due to changing weather patterns over recent years.
Speaking to Stabroek News recently, Sankies said that he doesn’t believe that the codes will be ready anytime in the near term.
“We have done some of the codes, some of them need revision, but the money ran out for the completion of all the work,” he said.
According to Myrna Pitt of the Ministry of Housing’s Central Housing and Planning Authority, input has been received from various stakeholders and the codes are in the hands of the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS).
But these are not mandatory since the GNBS isn’t the body to enforce the codes. Staffers of the GNBS said that even though the codes are not mandatory, builders and contractors build according to the code.
Communications Officer at the GNBS Evadnie Fields told this newspaper that it was the Government, and not the GNBS that is responsible for the funding of the work of the Committee. She said that even in the face of lack of funding, the Committee meets on a periodic basis to review its work.
According to Sankies, there needs to be an authority set up to oversee the administration of the codes. “We had put up a proposal in terms of a one-stop shop for the codes, comprised of different agencies, such as the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Housing and Water and the Ministry of Health,” he said.
He added that the development of the codes goes back some ten years with the committee working under the Ministry of Housing. But he said that after the fire on Homestretch Avenue which took out the Ministry of Housing some years back, the funding went up in smoke.
Sankies said that after that the National Building Code Committee was placed under the Ministry of Commerce on South Road, where it had been ever since. Sankies said that no resources are channelled for the Committee to do its work.
He said that the Committee has also been working to get people to make building blocks to a certain standards. He said too that some Caribbean countries have come from behind and surpassed Guyana in terms of the codes that they have devised and implemented.
The code includes sections on fire safety and occupancy, electrical and plumbing, use of Guyanese hardwoods, concrete blocks masonry and steel construction. It also speaks of high rise buildings and building homes with a height requirement for ground clearance.
Since the flooding of 2005, NGO Habitat for Humanity has implemented a standard that all of its houses would be built at a height of one metre off the ground.
Speaking at the George-town Chamber of Commerce and Industry dinner some weeks ago, Executive Director of Conser-vation International Dr David Singh said that the private sector needs to start participating in the process of adaptation to climate change and suggested the need for insurance companies lowering premiums for people who build houses in low risk areas and according to specific building codes.
Dr Singh noted at the dinner that soon after the floods receded there was much effort to resurrect attention on the National Building Code and have it firmly applied.
