Submitted by Anthony Davis

Confusion surrounds the Rubis Service Station in the Villages at Coverley and its presence in that housing community without Town and Country Planning approval to operate a gas station. More than a year after its construction the gas station is yet to be opened and investigations by Barbados TODAY have revealed that to date developers have not yet received permission to operate in the Christ Church community…Developer and managing director of Preconco Limited, Mark Maloney:”I don’t know anything about that

– Barbados Today

My, my, my, which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Did Town and Country Planning issue its edict before the Environmental Department stepped in or was it vice versa? I would like Mr. Mark Maloney to tell me how one can build a gas station without anyone noticing. Anyone travelling in that direction would have seen the building activity, so I would like to know why Town and Country Planning did not put a stop to the activity there.

If someone started building a house without prior permission from Town and Country Planning I am sure that it would not get very far, so an explanation is required from that agency as to why Mr. Maloney was allowed to build a gas station and not one person said/noticed anything. The gas station was built more than a year ago, so why was that correspondence which was sent on December 16, 2014 by Town and Country Planning not sent before?

Two questions must be answered:

1) Are the houses to be “relocated” chattel houses?

2) Where should Mr. Maloney relocate them to?

I don’t know if numbers 378, 379 and 380 are chattel houses. If they are not how can they be relocated? Should Preconco take them apart block by block? Should they look for somewhere to relocate them and put them there? What about the owners of those houses? Don’t they have any say in this very dodgy matter?

It beats me why no one from either the Environmental Department or Town and Country Planning saw it fit to say anything to the builders of the gas station while the building was going on. This can only be put down to the ineptitude that is rife in this Government and some of its agencies. Every day there is something which has not been done in order to facilitate the smooth running of something or the other in this country.

Where does the buck stop?

At Town and Country Planning or the Environmental Department?

How long will it take to relocate those houses?

What if the owners do not want to be relocated?

What is wrong with these Government projects that there is always some controversy about them?

Is it because the houses are not for the rich and famous?

Only recently photos of the development at Parish land in St. Philip showed the state of the properties overgrown with all kinds of weed, thus preventing people from occupying them. Now Minister Kellman is blaming Minister Lowe for the delay.

When will the blame game end?

Surely no one can blame Preconco for carrying out the building if no one says word one.

I wait with baited breath for the outcome of this farce!