Yvonne Ba­boolal

Short-list­ed con­trac­tors have not re­spond­ed to a re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) to ren­o­vate the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) apart­ment build­ing at Trou Macaque, Laven­tille, dam­aged by fire in De­cem­ber 2011, be­cause they are afraid for their lives."RF­Ps for the ren­o­va­tion and retro­fitting of the burnt build­ing have not at­tract­ed any sub­mis­sions or ten­ders," said Mau­risa Find­ley, HDC's con­sul­tant man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Four peo­ple died and sev­en were in­jured af­ter they jumped from the top floor of the five-storey build­ing, be­cause there was no fire es­cape. The HDC was crit­i­cised as a re­sult.Find­ley said the HDC in­vit­ed ten­ders on Oc­to­ber 11, 2013."Restora­tion of the fire dam­aged struc­ture is crit­i­cal," she said, "as we aim to in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of units in the com­mu­ni­ty."The RFP for the Trou Macaque com­mu­ni­ty al­so in­clud­ed the retro­fitting of the ex­ist­ing build­ings to fa­cil­i­tate ef­fec­tive emer­gency ex­its in each of them."

Find­ley said the HDC sent out the RF­Ps to spe­cif­ic con­trac­tors it be­lieved had the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to do the work, but none has re­spond­ed.Asked why, she said, "These are typ­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult ar­eas in which con­trac­tors are hard pressed, some­times afraid, or feel in­tim­i­dat­ed to do busi­ness."She said be­cause of the lack of re­sponse from spe­cif­ic con­trac­tors, HDC man­age­ment has now de­cid­ed to throw out an in­vi­ta­tion for the Trou Macaque project to the wider pub­lic.

"The HDC has de­cid­ed to in­vite Ex­pres­sions of In­ter­est via pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ment sched­uled for ear­ly Jan­u­ary, 2014. Any con­trac­tor who feels he can do the job can ten­der. We are de­ter­mined to do the up­grade work," Find­ley said.Laven­tille is a po­lice list­ed crime hot spot where gang killings are fre­quent and Find­ley added, "Many con­trac­tors have re­port­ed to the HDC they are or­dered to pay pro­tec­tion or en­try tax and have to fork up sub­stan­tial sums of mon­ey in or­der to car­ry out their work.

"If they don't pay up, they some­times face threats, the work is van­dalised and they are of­ten forced to aban­don the con­tract for the safe­ty of their fam­i­lies."Find­ley said for projects to con­tin­ue in crime hot spots, the state has to pay in­creased sums to cov­er po­lice pro­tec­tion or po­si­tion de­fence force per­son­nel in the area.She said it is dif­fi­cult to find high­ly-skilled en­gi­neer­ing con­trac­tors in the com­mu­ni­ty who are need­ed for a project like the ren­o­va­tion of the Trou Macaque build­ing.

Asked if no gang leader will, there­fore, have a chance of be­ing hired, she replied, "I am not say­ing res­i­dents are crim­i­nals. A lot of them are skilled."Well-known Beetham res­i­dent Ken­neth "Span­ish" Ro­driguez had told mem­bers of the me­dia he was the con­trac­tor for the po­lice post project on Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain, an­oth­er crime hot spot.The HDC had stren­u­ous­ly de­nied this. Find­ley said they had an ap­proved, cer­ti­fied con­trac­tor for that project and that Span­ish was not on their pay­roll.

Asked why the HDC took two years to get the ball rolling on the Trou Macaque project, she said they had been do­ing as­sess­ments and de­vel­op­ing the scope of work for the ren­o­va­tion and retro­fitting of 300 mul­ti-storey build­ings through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing the one at Trou Macaque."All the build­ings had to be care­ful­ly ex­am­ined from an en­gi­neer­ing per­spec­tive."Laven­tille West MP NiLe­ung Hy­po­lite said the HDC has not placed suf­fi­cient em­pha­sis on the Trou Macaque project.

"Right af­ter the fire, the Prime Min­is­ter had promised to start work im­me­di­ate­ly."Re­spond­ing to the safe­ty con­cerns of con­trac­tors, he said there is the op­tion of us­ing the po­lice and mem­bers of the De­fence Force, as was done for the Dun­can Street project.

Fire and Safe­ty Pro­gramme

Af­ter the Trou Macaque fire, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John said the HDC planned to spend ap­prox­i­mate­ly $174 mil­lion on safe­ty equip­ment and im­pose rigid build­ing safe­ty codes.Based on the re­lease the Trou Macaque fire em­pha­sised the need to retro­fit its old­er fa­cil­i­ties with ad­e­quate fire and emer­gency es­capes.It said this was part of an ex­ten­sive fire and emer­gency pro­gramme un­der­tak­en by the HDC, pri­mar­i­ly on mul­ti­storey build­ings.

The HDC said a wide range of strate­gies had been in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the pro­gramme to com­bat and re­duce the in­ci­dence and fre­quen­cy of fires in its 300 mul­ti­storey home com­plex­es spread across ten zones."The HDC con­duct­ed con­di­tion sur­veys and a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of the pre­ven­ta­tive ini­tia­tives re­quired for fire and emer­gency mit­i­ga­tion in its es­tates.

"Col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts with the T&T Fire Ser­vice iden­ti­fied req­ui­site so­lu­tions and the scope of work was de­vel­oped by our project over­sight en­gi­neer and the Health and Safe­ty Unit of the HDC," the re­lease stat­ed.The scope of the work in­cludes the de­sign and build­ing of fire es­capes in the 300 mul­ti­storey build­ings, in­stalling fire hose reels, stand­pipes and de­tec­tion sys­tems, and ten­ant train­ing and aware­ness.

"An eval­u­a­tion of the sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als has been con­duct­ed for pre­sen­ta­tion to the board of di­rec­tors at the next meet­ing sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 2014."Struc­tur­al en­gi­neer­ing ser­vices were al­so en­gaged to con­duct con­di­tion sur­veys for the de­sign and con­struc­tion of the fire es­capes and they are cur­rent­ly be­ing as­sessed."The re­sults of the con­di­tion sur­veys will be utilised in the de­vel­op­ment of the RF­Ps for the com­mence­ment of this project, ear­ly in 2014," the re­lease stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease af­ter the 2011 fire, the HDC em­barked on an ag­gres­sive fire pre­ven­tion aware­ness strat­e­gy aimed at ed­u­cat­ing and in­form­ing res­i­dents of the per­ils of fire and oth­er emer­gen­cies."Our Health and Safe­ty Unit, in con­junc­tion with the Fire Ser­vice, con­duct­ed sev­er­al out­reach safe­ty and aware­ness pro­grammes in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try."Res­i­dents of Trou Macaque, in par­tic­u­lar, were ex­posed to fire safe­ty and the use of fire safe­ty ap­pa­ra­tus on May 29, 2012.

"The com­mu­ni­ty was al­so pro­vid­ed with 20-pound fire ex­tin­guish­ers which are con­tained in fire safe­ty cab­i­nets along the cor­ri­dor of every build­ing."Nu­mer­ous oth­er com­mu­ni­ties were al­so pro­vid­ed with fire ex­tin­guish­ers, smoke de­tec­tors and hose reels. Res­i­dents were al­so trained in the use of these ap­pa­ra­tus by our health and safe­ty of­fi­cers."The re­lease said the HDC al­so en­gaged the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion and the po­lice to as­sist with on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to il­le­gal elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions among ten­ants.

"Of­fi­cial re­ports on il­le­gal elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions, called 'bridg­ing,' are sent to the Fire Ser­vice, the T&TEC and to ten­ants who are in breach.