During a recent meet-and-greet for contractors at the Government Building (see Thursday paper) they mentioned the waiting time for construction permits. This was identified as a risk to their operation and for possible delays in the execution of jobs.
Minister of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure VROMI Miklos Giterson told Parliament in Friday’s edition that 301 building permits had been requested last year, compared to 267 in 2017, 248 in 2016 and 218 in 2015. Of these, a combined 566 were finalised, 547 issued and 19 denied.
There consequently does not appear to have been a huge spike in applications following the extensive structural damage inflicted by Hurricane Irma. One obvious reason is that – after some initial confusion – authorities confirmed no permit would be needed just to repair or rebuild homes and businesses in their prior state.
The question whether getting these permits takes too long can partly be answered by the fact that of 301 requests in 2018, 148 have – so far – been processed and 82 finalised. For the preceding year those amounts are respectively 267, 181 and 143.
However, it turns out that too many applicants themselves fail to follow up. In fact, the time to pay for the service provided and pick up the documents is when they are often said to lose interest. That is not very helpful for several reasons.
To start, it makes the relevant departments and officials do a lot of work basically for nothing at the expense of the taxpayer, as no fee to cover such will be forthcoming. This not only lowers productivity, but takes valuable resources away from dealing with other legitimate and perhaps urgent requests.
So, builders in general need to not only complain but also get more serious about submitting permit applications and bidding on reconstruction projects, especially those financed from the Dutch-sponsored Trust Fund managed by the World Bank with its strict procedures and requirements. Offering them a bit of guidance and assistance in doing so certainly seems no unnecessary luxury.
