There was something more than a trifle curious about last week’s announcement that City Hall had called a halt to construction work on the 81-82 Camp and Robb streets construction site after it had been determined that the developer had apparently gone ahead with the exercise without receiving the requisite permission from the City Engineer’s Department.
The site in question is, in the first instance, arguably the most recent high-profile construction in the city, having drawn attention to itself as a result of a giant crane collapsing a few weeks ago, and after that becoming the subject of the attentions of former Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection Simona Broomes as a result of other workplace infractions. Those developments alone ought to have raised ‘red flags’ and caused City Hall to zero in on that particular work site.
But even setting those aside one has to wonder whether, as a matter of automaticity, construction sites like this one, that are prominent and impacting in one way or another on other aspects of normal life ought to be under constant official scrutiny; so that it should take no time to discern whether the project has been ‘cleared’ by the City Engineer’s Department; and shouldn’t the developer have been required, under the law, to display what document was issued by the City Engineer’s Department clearing him to press ahead with the project?
Oddly enough, and despite the public announcement of the ‘cease work’ order this newspaper, earlier this week observed workmen on the site. It appears, as far as we have been notified by City Hall, that the developer has, after all, been given clearance to resume work, albeit in a limited way, until the relevant permit from the City Engineer’s Department has been expedited in about a month’s time.
It is of course no secret that there are other construction projects ongoing in other parts of the capital and repetitive situations like the one that we have described where, it seems, such projects are not obliged to await the say so of the City Engineer’s Department and could very easily lead to a deepening of public suspicions that some of these might be driven by corrupt practices. Surely, therefore, a case exists for City Hall to undertake some sort of audit to establish that building sites possess the clearance of the City Engineer’s office or else, temporarily suspend work and require the developers to get themselves in order.
