Fri | Mar 29, 2024

Public-education exercise for building amnesty in Hanover

Published:Friday | November 8, 2019 | 12:44 AMBryan Miller/Gleaner Writer

Western Bureau:

The Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC) has embarked on a full-scale public-educaton exercise even as it announced a building amnesty for the parish.

At the corporation’s physical planning and environment committee meeting on Tuesday, Lucea’s mayor and chairman of the HMC, Sheridan Samuels, said that the public-education programme would last for 90 days, the period for which the amnesty will run.

“Let us use this week to advertise and start the preparation and start informing the people because I want everybody to be aware,” said Samuels. “Let them know that even the man that is adding to his original building needs to come in and speak with us because after this 90 days, they are going to be faced with serious challenges from us,” he said.

As part of the public-education exercise the municipality will use town criers, distribute flyers, and use social media to spread the message. “After all of this, no one will have any excuse again to build without the proper permission,” he cautioned.

Samuels said that he had seen a number of new buildings being constructed and additions being done to existing buildings in the parish. He said that he was sure that many of the projects were being done without building applications having been submitted to the corporation for approval.

In addition to the revenue loss, Samuels pointed out that the corporation had a responsibility to ensure the safety of the residents by seeing to it that construction works are in compliance with the regulations and building codes.