KSAMC, NEPA take flak for building breach chaos
Published:Wednesday | June 15, 2022 | 12:12 AM
Pressure is mounting for parliamentary intervention in the more-than-year-long impasse between residents from at least 24 communities across Kingston and St Andrew and two state agencies responsible for urban planning in the country.
Frustrated residents on Tuesday staged a virtual protest, accusing the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) of facilitating scores of building breaches by developers in the Corporate Area by failing to enforce legislation.
“There is a building and infrastructure committee of Parliament which is supposed to be monitoring and calling the agencies to come and give an account of what it is that they are doing with respect to planning. The parliamentary committee needs to do its job,” said Citizens’ Right to the City (CRC) member Carol Narcisse.
CRC is an alliance of 24 citizens’ associations from across the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA) and its environs, advocating for the rights of residents to both the natural and built environments.
The residents, who have said they are now prisoners in their homes, have outlined a slew of allegations against the state agencies and developers.
The KSAMC and NEPA have been accused of granting permits to developers for buildings without sewerage plans, allowing the sale of, and advertisements for, properties ordered demolished by the courts, and failing to inspect buildings reported to be in breach of the Town and Country Planning and Building acts.
The group is demanding that the KSAMC, NEPA, and the National Works Agency (NWA) respond to written concerns, questions, and proposals, noting that it is prepared to take its protest to the streets.
It is also calling for NEPA and the KSAMC to adhere to, and enforce, relevant legislation and for the state agencies to review and amend the 2017 Provisional Development Order for the KMA, and for the enactment of the revised version into law.
CRC wants the KSAMC to adopt a policy of no building approvals until all requirements are in place, which it said would end the practice of granting provisional approvals subject to modification of covenants.
The residents are further demanding that state agencies enforce stop orders and other sanctions on building projects that violate approved plans or breach regulations.
There are also calls for the setting of standards and specifications for notices displayed about proposed developments, consultations with neighbouring residents on proposed developments, change of use, covenant changes, and clarification of zoning.
CRC said the issues were raised at a meeting with Kingston Mayor Delroy Williams in April, but said since that time little has been done to address their concerns.
“We’re saying that the time is long passed and so they have to move from promises to very concrete actions,” Narcisse insisted.
“What is happening is that people are seeing zinc fences going up and bulldozers are working all night behind their backyard. A building is being demolished, and that’s how the citizens know that a building is going up next door,” Patricia Green, CRC’s architectural consultant, added.
“In some cases where residents have written legal letters to the KSAMC and NEPA to say, ‘We are objecting to the development,’ these authorities have not responded,” she said, while insisting that no building permits be issued until all requirements of developers are in place.
Paddington Terrace resident Nadeen Campbell, too, lamented that residents in that Kingston 8 community have become “prisoners in their homes”.
“So many persons who live next door to, or on the boundaries of, these construction sites have to be living at their doctors. They’re having breathing issues. They’re having all kinds of health issues,” said Campbell.
“This has been going on for two years in a very concentrated way. There’s a major health crisis that is going on amongst the residents in these areas.”