Duguid: 81 percent of houses damaged by Elsa have been assessed

Minister of Housing, Lands, and Maintainance Dr William Duguid said 81 percent of houses damaged by Hurricane Elsa have been assessed.

Today, while speaking to members of the media at Mahogany Lane, The City, where a wooden three-bedroom house in a state of disrepair was demolished by the Urban Development Commission (UDC) to be rebuilt, Duguid shared that out of the 2 077 houses earmarked to be assessed, 1 681 have been completed.

He said all the houses in St Peter, St Andrew, St Joseph and St John that were affected by the hurricane and freak storm have already been assessed.

“And of those assessments, 404, or 24 percent, are total rebuilds. And the repairs are one 1 191, or 71 percent,” Duguid said.

He also announced that 90 homeowners who requested only materials have received what was needed to complete their own repairs.

Duguid also made it clear that all procedures of financial rules have been followed as it relates to awarding contracts for repairs or rebuilds to houses damaged by the hurricane.

“And we will continue to follow the financial rules without exception. The second issue is the person is again misguided about a person who was misplaced from Deans Town.

“Nobody was misplaced or misrepresented from Deans Town. Deans Town continues to be a very good programme that we launched. We had a press conference there and we are very happy with how the Deans Town sales are going,” he said.

The Minister explained that the house at Mahogany Lane, owned by 64-year-old Judy Goddard and was damaged by Hurricane Elsa, had fallen into the road, making it a danger to road users and traffic. He said because of the state of Goddard’s house, UDC placed rebuilding it at the top of the list.

Goddard, who said she has lived at the close to 100-year-old house for most of her life, said she was happy that it was being rebuilt. (AH)