The Cabinet of Dominica has approved the new Building Codes and Regulations 2022.
Minister for Planning, Economic Development, Climate Resilience and Sustainable Development and Renewable Energy, Dr. Vince Henderson made the announcement on Prime Minister weekly Annou Pale Program on Sunday night.
“We recently approved the new billing regulations 2022,” he said. “The code really sets out the standards for construction so anything in the built environment, anything that is defined as a development will fall under what is considered standards for construction.
Henderson continued, “The regulations is really the enforcement part of it, so the regulations speaks to how, it gives a detail of what needs to be done, how it should be monitored and supervised and of course enforced.”
According to him, essentially what the code does is to provide the guidelines – the instruction manual – as to what should be done to ensure that persons can adhere to the standards of construction.
Dr. Henderson said Post Hurricane Maria there were a number of consultations and discussions with the builders association, architects, engineers association, the input of the OECS commission, the Physical Planning Division, and the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in seeking to rebuild.
“We were able to evaluate the impact and look for the lessons to be learnt and those fed into what we now have as the building regulations,” the minister stated.
Meantime, Acting Chief Physical Planner, Naomi Dorival said a few key lessons learnt following the passage of Hurricane Maria is that the implementation of the code itself had some flaws.
“We had a lack of compliance to the standards, the location of certain buildings, because if you are in an area that is exposed to hazards then the likelihood of impact is increased…so we saw that the location of some buildings, the infrastructure played a part in that,” she explained.
She also mentioned that there were flaws/gaps in the quality of material used for construction.
“So these are the key areas that we recognized we needed to have stringent enforcement play a role,” Dorival stated.
Waste of time. Even the banks and Credit unions approving loans without old building code approval. I personally know of a woman who did not receive any approval from the planning division that is being funded by the RCCU to continue to build a monstrocity in the roseau valley near ophelia.
idk maybe Jimmit
Does Dominica have any? I never knew. Well they certainly aren’t being enforced.
I must say those homes in the photo look very nice.Where is that castle comfort?
See, now this leaves me with more questions than answers and I’m sure it does the same for the journalist who wrote it. I wish some further questions could have been asked of the Acting CPP, but this is extracted from a show.
Meanwhile you give your approval to land owners to subdivide and sell land for home construction where there’re no vehicle access roads. If there are any roads leading to these “subdivision” lots they remain in disrepair, dangerous and neglected. Therefore, in the event of a disaster, whether your house was constructed according to the “Dominica building code” rescuers and emergency vehicles aren’t able to get to you. So while these Joke-aSS-is are braying about code they are not concerned about access to your home after they deliberately authorized and approve subdivision land to be sold without access road to those homes which are built on these land. This government is just a mess and confusion at every turn. What a disgrace! They talk talk to make people believe they are doing something when they know that they are not doing a darn thing to help the poor people in Dominica.
I missed the show last evening, and was lookin forward to hearing/reading the media report. I listened keenly this morning to DBS, now I’m reading this article hoping more details would be provided and to my surprise, the very same short clips, (exact audio from DBS) was used in this article. Ahhhh DNO, you can’t get your reporters to actually listen to the show and formulate a detailed article? I am sure admin won’t post this comment, but it’s such shame.
ADMIN: We appreciate your feedback. The information and quotations were from the show but we will keep your comment in mind.
The Government must be consistent.. There are in Checkhall Valley violations of building safety and proper building structures but the owner was brought before the court for violating the rules several times and nothing was done allegedly because the owner was well connected politically For Minister Vince Henderson to come now to set up new building codes he needs to go back and correct previous violations as for example what occurred in the Checkhall Valley
There we go. That’s what we call the Dominica Building Code as enacted by the DLP cabal. Remember, no law and no constitution and no Building Code…
those buildings up bellevie and others build buy cmmc do not even pass the old building codes in dominica . you all think those new codes gonna make a difference
Are you serious?
You mean planning approved the aptt construction on the bank of the Roseau river at the back of Grammar School?
And.did.planning Dept approve the construction of apartment housing in rural communities where sewage treatment is absent? De place stinks!!!!!
If permission was granted then I will say that the construction standards are poor.
Excuse me but is this the standard for the first climate resilient country in the world???? Look around!!!!!