In re­view­ing the cur­rent par­lia­men­tary agen­da, the cham­ber notes that the Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Bill is to be tabled for first read­ing. We shall seek to pro­cure a copy there­of, for re­view, in or­der to ap­pre­ci­ate whether or not any of our views on flood­ing, land de­vel­op­ment and the reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval process or en­force­ment have been in­cor­po­rat­ed in some way. The cham­ber's view on en­force­ment is that the ex­ist­ing Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Act Chap­ter 35:01 is, by and large, suf­fi­cient to ad­dress or­der­ly land de­vel­op­ment and con­struc­tion. Its en­force­ment in a sus­tained man­ner is re­al­ly the main chal­lenge. It ap­pears that Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie shares our view. A news­pa­per re­ports his ob­ser­va­tion that, be­tween 1969, when the act first be­came law, to 2004, there were on­ly 81 in­stances of en­force­ment by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion. That works out to an av­er­age of three per year over the pe­ri­od. It does not in­clude the last sev­en years, 2005-2011, a pe­ri­od which dur­ing which there was more than one boom in con­struc­tion and, cer­tain­ly, in ur­ban de­vel­op­ment.

With re­spect to the present Act, Sec­tion 16 al­lows the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my, where it ap­pears to him/her that any de­vel­op­ment of land is be­ing car­ried out af­ter the Act hav­ing re­gard to the pro­vi­sion of the de­vel­op­ment plan and to any oth­er ma­te­r­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions, to serve on the own­er or oc­cu­pi­er of the land an en­force­ment no­tice. This may be done in cas­es where the de­vel­op­ment has tak­en place with­out the grant of per­mis­sion re­quired there­by, or that any con­di­tion sub­ject to which per­mis­sion was grant­ed in re­spect of any de­vel­op­ment has not been com­plied with, but with­in four years af­ter the date of the al­leged fail­ure to com­ply. The en­force­ment may re­quire the de­mo­li­tion or al­ter­ation of any build­ings or works, the dis­con­tin­u­ance of any use of land or the car­ry­ing out on land of any build­ing or oth­er op­er­a­tion. Per­haps, the lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od of four years from the date of the al­leged fail­ure to com­ply, de­serves some en­large­ment, but the chal­lenge re­mains en­force­ment and the cham­ber con­tends that the in­tro­duc­tion of new leg­is­la­tion will not, by it­self, sur­mount such a chal­lenge. Po­lit­i­cal will, ad­e­quate re­sources and wide­spread ed­u­ca­tion just may do the trick.

We re­peat here, in sup­port of our con­tri­bu­tion, a blog on a dai­ly news­pa­per's Web site by "That­guy TT" aimed at Tewarie: "Peo­ple may do what they want, but it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure that what they do is right and le­gal. If this is not done, every sin­gle mem­ber of the re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ty is guilty of en­abling such be­hav­iour. If the ones charged with "polic­ing" do not do their jobs... what else can we ex­pect but an­ar­chy?" The cham­ber's crit­i­cism is not tar­get­ed at this pe­ri­od of na­tion­al gov­er­nance on­ly. For ex­am­ple, Pa­tri­cia Mejias, for­mer chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. in 2009 iden­ti­fied the source of floods in that re­gion to be the in­dis­crim­i­nate and il­le­gal de­vel­op­ment of land in the hills of north Tu­na­puna and an­nounced her in­ten­tion to meet with the same Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion and stake­hold­ers, in or­der to find a way to stop peo­ple from cut­ting the hills for "de­vel­op­ment." It would be in­ter­est­ing to know whether this ever came to pass and, more im­por­tant­ly, what ac­tion was ever tak­en!

Colm Im­bert, the for­mer min­is­ter of works and trans­port, af­ter wit­ness­ing flood dam­age in his con­stituen­cy and else­where in the same 2009, al­so promised that the PNM Gov­ern­ment would be go­ing to Par­lia­ment to strength­en his min­istry's ca­pa­bil­i­ties with re­spect to block­ages of wa­ter­cours­es and de­vel­op­ments which, in his opin­ion, re­sult­ed in such dam­age. Per­haps, this new bill for first read­ing, is the se­quel! Who knows? Sec­tion 5 of the ex­ist­ing act re­quires Tewarie to car­ry out a sur­vey of the en­tire coun­try and sub­mit to Par­lia­ment a de­vel­op­ment plan, con­sist­ing of the sur­vey, to­geth­er with rec­om­men­da­tions in­di­cat­ing the man­ner in which land in T&T may be used (whether by the car­ry­ing out of de­vel­op­ment or oth­er­wise), and the stages by which any such de­vel­op­ment may be car­ried out. It ap­pears to the cham­ber that his ac­cess to Par­lia­ment for this rea­son may prove to be more ben­e­fi­cial than sim­ply lay­ing a new bill, with which tech­nocrats must be­gin to fa­mil­iarise them­selves afresh. Sec­tion 5 al­so re­quires the min­ster to ta­ble this plan not lat­er than sev­en years af­ter the com­mence­ment of the 1969 Act. Even if Gov­ern­ment did so in 1976, the needs of our peo­ple and land stock avail­able to meet such needs, as well as the con­se­quent risks, would have changed, in more than 40 years! This is what Par­lia­ment should be asked to ad­dress, and ad­dress be­fore the next tor­ren­tial down­pour.

Nei­ther is the path of those who wish to abide by the law as it stands, and en­gage the process an easy one. The tra­di­tion­al runaround from pub­lic util­i­ties like the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, the Fire Ser­vices, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, the Drainage Di­vi­sion, and the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands through to fi­nal ap­proval of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, is so frus­trat­ing, an­noy­ing, in­con­ve­nient and down­right waste­ful­ly in­ef­fi­cient, that many hon­est to good­ness law-abid­ing cit­i­zens find them­selves se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing bend­ing the rules in or­der to pro­ceed with nec­es­sary re­pairs, ad­di­tions, or ren­o­va­tions. So, not on­ly is there no en­force­ment of Sec­tion 16, but cit­i­zens them­selves who wish to ob­serve and so obey the law, have no al­ter­na­tive but to grit their teeth when they en­counter the ex­ist­ing bu­reau­cra­cy. Un­doubt­ed­ly, this has spawned and in­sti­tu­tion­alised the al­le­ga­tion or per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion by those try­ing to obey the law.

The cham­ber will ap­proach the re­view of the new Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Bill with an open mind, de­spite the fore­go­ing, but any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for its in­tro­duc­tion by giv­ing a fail­ing grade to the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, is po­ten­tial­ly un­fair and, in our opin­ion, un­found­ed. Any "new wine in old bot­tles" which fails to suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dress the an­nu­al con­cerns with flood­ing, loss of life, prop­er­ty does not bring added val­ue to the qual­i­ty of our lives.

T&T CHAM­BER OF IN­DUS­TRY& COM­MERCE