THE St Ann Parish Council yesterday locked down the Bahia Principe hotel site, where 40 year-old construction worker Linval Mitchell of Spanish Town was killed and 15 others injured Wednesday, when a section of the lobby collapsed.

Three of the injured were up to last night in serious condition at the St Ann’s Bay Hospital.

Labour Minister Derrick Kellier, who toured the troubled site yesterday and met with the management of the hotel and parish council representatives, said a team would be appointed to do a forensic check to determine the full cause of the collapse, the second such incident at the site in three months.

A team, made up of off-site engineers and other persons, is to be appointed to do the forensic checks, Kellier said, and submit a full report within 14 days after its appointment.

“We have agreed that all necessary structural checks have to be done by in-house engineers before further concrete work can be done,” Kellier told journalists after the meeting.

After this check, the superintendent of works will have to sign-off to ensure full verification is done, Kellier added.

The area where the accident took place has been taped off and no work will resume in that section, or material removed, until the forensic checks are done.

It has also been recommended that the St Ann Parish Council and members of the labour ministry’s operational safety and health team complete checks on other areas of the site this weekend “until they are satisfied that work can continue on the other areas”, Kellier said.

Once this check is carried out over the weekend, the minister said full resumption of work would take place to ensure the December 2006 opening date is met.

The Pear Tree Bottom hotel site is, however, expected to reopen next Tuesday, a source told the Observer last night.

Yesterday, the president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), Senator Dwight Nelson, blamed the Ministry of Labour and Social Security for Wednesday’s accident at the hotel.

Senator Nelson said the ministry had failed to ensure that the site followed the provisions of the Factories Act concerning safety at construction sites and had ignored warnings from the central health committee of the Ministry of Health.

“The Ministry of Labour must take complete responsibility for the accidents that are happening on the site,” Nelson said.

“We know, for a fact that the central health committee of the Ministry of Health wrote the Ministry of Labour sometime ago expressing dissatisfaction with what was happening at the site. We know that the St Ann’s Bay Hospital has been deluged with patients as a consequence of accidents on the site. The Ministry of Labour has not yet responded to the committee.

“Now that the latest accident has occurred, resulting in death, we hear the minister of labour is preparing to go down and tour the site. The minister of labour cannot act after the fact. It is the responsibility of the ministry, under the Factories Act, to ensure that proper safety measures are put in place at every construction site,” Nelson said.