KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Plans to com­plete de­mo­li­tion of the old San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court build­ing to­mor­row have been wel­comed by the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FACC).

GS­FACC pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh has rec­om­mend­ed that the space on Har­ris Street, where the derelict build­ing is lo­cat­ed, be used to cre­ate ad­di­tion­al park­ing in the city hub. He not­ed that three church­es, four schools, the South­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, Supreme Court, City Hall and sev­er­al law of­fi­cers are lo­cat­ed near­by.

“The rub­ble from the de­mol­ished build­ing can be used to cre­ate a foun­da­tion for a tem­po­rary car park for the sur­round­ing build­ings that suf­fer from a lack of ad­e­quate park­ing space,” he said.

Fol­low­ing re­cent fires at the di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing, the Ju­di­cia­ry award­ed a con­tract for its de­mo­li­tion and sub­se­quent­ly ad­vised that work will be­gin to­mor­row and end on Oc­to­ber 15.

The de­mo­li­tion will be car­ried out over four week­ends and there will be traf­fic dis­rup­tions due to the move­ment of ex­tra heavy ve­hi­cles and crane op­er­a­tions. 

A re­lease from the Ju­di­cia­ry stat­ed that Har­ris Street, be­tween Lord and Knox Streets, will be closed on the de­mo­li­tion days from 6 am to 8 pm and nor­mal traf­fic op­er­a­tions will re­sume on Oc­to­ber 16. 

Singh said apart from be­ing an eye­sore, the build­ing had been deemed un­safe by San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion’s En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment.

“This build­ing al­so oc­cu­pies a space close to NIB, the po­lice head­quar­ters, and sev­er­al schools in the ar­eas and pos­es a threat from oth­er po­ten­tial nat­ur­al dis­as­ters be­cause we live in an earth­quake zone and are al­so sub­ject to hur­ri­canes an­nu­al­ly,” he said.

Singh said home­less peo­ple had set fires in the build­ing in the past week. 

“Of course, this pos­es fur­ther threats to the lives of peo­ple who work in the neigh­bour­hood of this ex­ist­ing build­ing,” he said.

The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) and Prison Ser­vice em­barked on the de­mo­li­tion of the build­ing in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2020, re­mov­ing all elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing, and heavy met­al works. How­ev­er, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced a halt to the ac­tiv­i­ty. The MOWT then had equip­ment is­sues and could not pro­ceed fur­ther.

The SFCC in­clud­ed the build­ing’s de­mo­li­tion in its city clean-up cam­paign and start­ed work on Ju­ly 23, 2022, but could not com­plete the work.
Due to the ac­cel­er­at­ed de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the build­ing, the Ju­di­cia­ry pro­cured the ser­vices of a con­trac­tor to com­plete the de­mo­li­tion.