'Impotent' governments
Published:Saturday | January 8, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Edmond Campbell, Senior Staff Reporter
FRUSTRATED RESIDENTS of at least one St Andrew community have painted respective administrations in Jamaica as impotent after suffering serious inconveniences at the hands of business interests for 25 years.
Despite valiant attempts by battle-weary residents of Eastwood Park Gardens to prevent non-conforming use of scores of residences in their community, business operators have stubbornly resisted sustained pressure from the community to lock down their businesses.
President of the Eastwood Park Citizens' Association, Monica Hyde, said for over a quarter of a century, governments have "failed miserably" to curtail the vexatious problem.
The commercialisation of East-wood Park Gardens and Richmond Park in St Andrew has been a long-standing problem, which has attracted extensive media coverage for decades.
The issue first grabbed public attention in the '90s, and even led to the intervention of a former prime minister. However, today, the residents of Eastwood Park Gardens are no closer to a resolution than when they first decried efforts to introduce a commercial entity to their community in 1986.
Hyde told The Gleaner that many residents lost hope and left the community.
Acknowledging a recent intervention by Dr Peter Phillips, member of parliament for East Central St Andrew, Hyde said the community was still waiting for a breakthrough.
25-year-old issue
President of the Richmond Park Citizens' Association, Preston Tabois, said the residents of his community had been asking the authorities for assistance for more than 25 years to shut down garages and other commercial entities in their community. He said many persons had set up businesses in the residential area breaching the Town and Country Planning Act.
In a motion introduced in Parliament last year, Phillips urged Parliament to review the town and country planning law to give teeth to the legislation so that the authorities could move swiftly to close businesses adjudged to be in breach of the statute.
The resolution noted that under the current law, it was difficult for aggrieved property owners to secure redress against those engaged in non-conforming use of property.
Tabois told The Gleaner yesterday that with the issue now before Parliament's Infrastructure and Physical Development Committee, there was a glimmer of hope that legislators could propose changes to the law, which would reduce the widespread commercialisation of sections of the Corporate Area zoned for residential communities.
At a meeting of the Infrastruc-ture and Physical Development Committee on Tuesday, Town Clerk Errol Greene told lawmakers that the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) had been stymied by legal challenges in its efforts at tackling the problem.
"We are pretty much ignored when we get the complaints and serve notices. The offenders ignore us 100 per cent of the time."
He stressed that cease and enforcement notices are disregarded by persons who flout the law.
According to Greene, when the KSAC takes offenders to court, it incurs a significant legal cost to the corporation.
"A very large trunk of the revenue we earn from building fees goes back to pay lawyers to deal with the very situation we are discussing today (Tuesday)," he said.
Greene divulged that at present, the KSAC had 18 cases in court for Eastwood Park Gardens.