State minister with responsibility for local government, Robert Montague (second left), has the attention of (from left) Mayor of Spanish Town Andrew Wheatley; Bensonton councillor Lydia Richards; Mayor of Portmore Keith Hinds; Mayor of Mandeville, Brenda Ramsay, and Mayor of May Pen, Milton Brown. They were attending a recent Editors' Forum at The Gleaner in Kingston. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer

Local government watchdog Robert Montague has warned that the imminent implementation of a national building code will require parish council approval for all demolitions.

"You need a permit to put up a structure, but you do not need a permit to take down a structure. And what we have lost in Jamaica is a lot of architectural gems, because everybody just go and pull it down and they sell the bricks," said Montague, the former Port Maria mayor who is now state minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, in charge of local government affairs.

"Now, when the new code is promulgated, you are going to need a permit to pull down, so the towns will have a chance to preserve, to say, 'Look, no, no'."

Greater oversight

The code, which up to this month was being refined by the Jamaica Institution of Engineers, will reportedly give greater power and oversight to parish councils over construction in their precincts.

He was speaking at a Gleaner Editors' Forum at the newspaper's central Kingston offices.

Montague, who since September has been charged with fast-tracking the devolution of political control from an official Local Government Ministry to parish councils, said bureaucracy and half-baked plans in the past helped retard the effectiveness of the community bodies.

"The parish councils, I have already told them they were being used as storerooms where persons have some half-drawn plans and they come and leave it and they're going to come back for it to adjust it. They don't come back, and then who gets the bad name? The parish council. I said to them, 'Do not take a plan until when the superintendent looks at it, at which time it is complete'."

Education programme

Lydia Richards, councillor for the Bensonton division in St Ann, noted that a public awareness campaign was imperative to the process of enforcement and compliance.

"With this new thrust, we need a massive education programme, because the people are not aware of who they are to apply, or who is to give them the permit or where they are to go. I think that is why a lot of them don't do anything. Because you have somebody having a dance and they are not sure if they are to go to the parish council or to go to the police. We need a national programme just to educate the people as to what is to happen.

"With regards to where people build, you talking about building code and you talking about people bringing in things to get approval. A lot of people don't bring in anything where I come from. The point is, what is going to happen to them now? If these people are aware as to why they need to bring in the plans, then they will bring it in; you know, they want to be a part of what is happening."

Lack of resources

But responding to the state minister, Brenda Ramsay, mayor of Mandeville, argued that a lack of adequate human resources had hamstrung the councils.

"We have a lot of breaches, and to tell you the truth, we don't have enough officers and we never will. The pace at which development is taking place all over the island, we will never have.

"But, Minister, I think we should be moving now to let technology aid us ... that we can now go in and look at where a house is going up for which approval is not granted. We must use technology to assist us, because we will never have enough staff to do what we are supposed to do."

Uncoordinated relationship

While Spanish Town Mayor Dr Andrew Wheatley acknowledges the importance of decentralisation, he said the uncoordinated relationship between the councils and other government agencies hindered basic services such as waste collection.

Said Wheatley: "The mayor from Mandeville, Ms Ramsay, men-tioned especially Solid Waste Management Authority. I think the relationship between the council and those entities, those agencies ... needs to be more clearly defined, because they are key agencies to the running of the parish council.

"A lot of persons will call about street lights, they call about garbage collection, all of those stuff. So, the relationship between the local authorities is not like in, say, the United States, where the local authorities are in control of, for example, the police, the garbage collection.

Montague said that parish councils will have to be involved in budget planning for garbage collection and seek creative alternatives to secure additional funding to supplement core services.