Housing ministry step up maintenance plan

The Ministry of Housing, Lands and Maintenance has identified 135 wells in ten districts across the country that it has deemed “critical” and in urgent need of repair, the ministry’s Maintenance Supervisor Dwight Thornhill has told lawmakers.

Thornhill made the disclosure during the annual Estimates 2021-2022 hearings as he was responding to Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw, the MP for St Michael South East, who referred to the July 4, 2019 tragedy when 17-year-old Kyriq Boyce fell into a NHC well at 100-feet at Martins Road, The Pine. She asked the ministry to report on its well maintenance programme.

Bradshaw said: “Of concern to me is the issue of maintenance of the housing units. I believe it was stated earlier by the Leader of the Opposition that in relation to the Pinelands area we had a very tragic circumstance about two years ago in relation to a young man who had lost his life after falling into a well which would have been under the maintenance control of the National Housing Corporation.

“I remain concerned that although we have had funds allocated specifically to deal with the worst wells in the St Michael South East area and across the country that we still have a number of wells that have to be maintained.”

The Leader of Government Business made it clear that she does not want a repeat of the tragic incident and called on the ministry to give an account of the maintenance.

She said: “I do think that the ministry should address the issue of the on-going maintenance programme. What is in the budget at this time to allay the fears of constituents and certainly the wider population. I would not want a repeat of what happened before. I want to hear what steps have been taken since that unfortunate incident to ensure that the maintenance programme has been improved.”

It was then that Thornhill revealed that an aggressive maintenance campaign was formalised after the “unfortunate tragedy”.

He said: “National Housing has always been trying to maintain its septic systems at that point we went on a campaign where we had an investigation of the wells and septic tanks in ten specified Housing Areas. We looked at the older Housing Estates that had more deterioration to the sewage systems and wells. We identified 135 critical wells to repair.”

Thornhill gave a breakdown of the work done, what is on-going and what is outstanding.

He said: “At present 68 have been completed, 37 are in progress and we still have another 30 to go. We have been doing work in Pinelands, Wildey, Parkinson, Deacons. We finish 19 in the Pine, 10 in Wildey, 10 in Parkinson Field, we have also one working on in the Deacons Housing area and its environs, four at Deacons Farm, four at Rosemont and 11 in Fernihurst. We have also done work in Wotton, Gall Hill and Silver Hill; seven in Wotton, two in Gall Hill and three in Silver Hill. We have recently started the Haynesville area.”

The supervisor pointed out that the programme is focusing on other wells as well. He explained the current slab replacement programme that was also underway.

Thornhill said: “Not only are we dealing with the critical wells but there are also some other wells we need to do work on, the desludging work. A lot of these wells had not been desludged for a while and they were built for a particular capacity. But as the numbers and density in the housing units increase the capacity of these wells were reached quickly, so they need to be de sludge to keep them in good working order. You must also clean the septic tanks.

“To reduce our liability, we started a slab programme where we reinforce concrete slabs. If you see a slab that may be defective or cracked let us know, we can replace that quickly and that reduces our liability to the public. We had a pilot programme and cut down about 35 of these slabs in the Bonnets area. We also did 15 in the Wildey area.”

He gave an assurance that the wells maintenance programme is constant across all housing estates.

“Apart from the estates that we identified as critical, we were also doing other work because we have other housing estates that require maintenance. We have conducted repairs to a septic tank and wells in Belleplaine, we have done two there, four in Bonnets, five in St Matthias and seven in Eden Lodge. We are not just focusing on the older housing estates, we are constantly maintaining,” the supervisor said.

(IMC)