Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

New home-own­ers who ben­e­fit­ed from Gov­ern­ment's hous­ing project at Har­mo­ny Hall, Gas­par­il­lo, are com­plain­ing of cracks in their apart­ments. The cost of each apart­ment is $220,000. The res­i­dents said they ex­pect­ed to move in­to their new apart­ments at the end of Jan­u­ary but to date the build­ing re­mains in­com­plete. One res­i­dent said on De­cem­ber 19, they re­ceived keys to to their apart­ments. He added: "We were told that every­thing would be fin­ished on time and that by late Jan­u­ary, we would move in. I have to pay $1,400 for the place where I am stay­ing now and my mort­gage is $932. It is un­fair that I have to pay a mort­gage for an apart­ment which is al­ready crack­ing."

Hewas hap­py to get his new home but was wor­ried that by the time he fin­ished pay­ing his mort­gage in 2035, his apart­ment would have crum­bled. Checks by the T&T Guardian re­vealed a rusty kitchen sink and in­com­plete stair­cas­es at the build­ings. Bushy vines snaked up against the sides of the com­plex while there was no prop­er walk­way to the apart­ment doors. The res­i­dent said now a new CEO was in place, the hous­ing pro­gramme was be­ing ac­cel­er­at­ed. Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Tina Gron­lund Nunez said new own­ers could not move in­to the homes un­til cer­tifi­cates were re­ceived from the Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate.

Re­gard­ing the cracks in the hous­es, Gron­lund Nunez said the new ten­ants had a pe­ri­od of six months to iden­ti­fy all the prob­lems they had with the HDC homes. Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the HDC Jear­lean John said on­ly yes­ter­day the Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate is­sued split­ter cer­tifi­cates" for build­ings one, two and three. She said those build­ings com­prise d 16 units. John said build­ings four and five would be con­nect­ed to­mor­row.