McKenzie: New building code coming next fiscal year

WESTERN BUREAU:

Local Government and Community Development Minister Desmond McKenzie has said that the country’s new building code, which has been in gestation for nearly two decades, is scheduled for implementation in the upcoming fiscal year.

As Jamaica deals with the aftermath of the most powerful storm ever to strike the island, he said the longstanding culture of unsafe construction must end, and a strengthened national building code will be rolled out in the 2025-2026 fiscal year to force the change.

McKenzie said the Hurricane Melissa experience proved once again that Jamaica cannot afford to maintain its current approach to land use and building practices.

“I don’t want to talk too early, but our building code stood up,” he said while speaking at a cleanup session at the St Elizabeth Infirmary, where sections of the facility were flooded and destroyed during the passage of the October 28 Category 5 hurricane. “But we need to do a lot more, and the country must be prepared to work with us when we introduce measures which will be done to preserve life and prosperity.”

Dangerous shortcuts

Speaking on the nation’s informal building habits, McKenzie said too many Jamaicans continue to take dangerous shortcuts, placing entire families in harm’s way.

“And this thing where people just take two sheets of zinc and some ply and put down a house in the middle of a riverbed, and when you talk to them, they say they are poor – but the time has come when we must forget about whether we are poor or rich because disaster don’t know anybody,” he stressed.

The minister noted that the majority of displacement and destruction documented after Hurricane Melissa occurred in areas where structures had been erected without adherence to zoning laws, engineering standards, or common-sense environmental safeguards.

“If we look at what has taken place, it is the majority of those of us that say we are poor who have suffered mostly from disasters because of how we conduct ourselves in terms of putting down structures,” he said.

The last building code was created in 1908 in response to the 1907 earthquake that ravaged Kingston.

The new building codes will require that buildings are constructed to withstand Category 5 hurricanes – the fiercest storms on the scale. They will be paired with stronger enforcement powers for municipal corporations, mandatory compliance checks, and stricter penalties for illegal construction in high-risk zones. Special attention will be directed at riverbeds, gully banks, coastal edges, and unstable hillsides.

McKenzie stressed that change will require courage, especially from political leaders accustomed to absorbing public backlash when enforcement intersects with poverty.

“I am making a general appeal that persons must understand that if the law says that you can’t [build or live somwhere, you must comply]. We are going to be rolling out all of this next year,” he said. “But the country must recognise that we cannot continue to operate like this much longer.”

He noted that humanitarian catastrophe would have been far worse had the storm tracked across the capital.

“Ask yourself the question: If Melissa had come straight across Kingston, what would happen to Jamaica? It’s not going to be possible for us to continue like this.”

Senior officials in the ministry say details of the new code will be unveiled early in the next fiscal year, alongside public education campaigns and technical support programmes for low-income families. But McKenzie insisted the success of the initiative will rest, ultimately, on national discipline.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com