MEMBER of Parliament for Kingston East and Port Royal Phillip Paulwell is urging the Government to rapidly respond to the cries of residents of Harbour Heights for assistance to prevent further flooding and damage there, warning that another episode of heavy rains will spell “calamity” for that community.

His pronouncement comes on the heels of a frantic appeal by homeowners in the area this past week for the authorities to correct blunders which, they said, have endangered their community over the years and have got worse since torrential rains linked to two tropical storms between October and November wreaked havoc in the area and other sections of the island.

The residents charged that work done under a 2012 landslide mitigation project through a US$2.37-million grant from the Japanese Social Development Fund had fallen short of its intended scope. The mitigation project should have included the plotting – with the aid of GPS (global positioning system) technology and local ‘lay-of-the-land’ knowledge – outlining and erecting of a series of drains, gutters, channels and rainwater harvesting strategies that would act as natural hazard-intervention techniques.

Now, the residents said that around 12 houses in the community — nestled between Caribbean Cement Company on one end and Harbour View on the other — are exposed to a gaping chasm after the recent rains dislodged their backyards, sweeping away clothes lines and fruit trees.

Speaking with the Jamaica Observer yesterday, Paulwell said the Government was courting disaster by delaying.

“This should have been fixed two years ago so we are way behind time and trust me, if we have any more heavy rains it is going to be a disaster area. It is going to be a disaster for the country if help doesn’t come immediately,” he said, noting that the adjoining Harbour Drive Community, which belongs to the East Rural St Andrew constituency represented by Juliet Holness, is also affected.

“On the Harbour Drive side we have about 12 homes but in Harbour Heights you have many, many people who would be affected so it would be scores who would be affected,” he pointed out.

In the meantime, the Kingston East and Port Royal MP said he has not been turning a blind eye to the situation.

“I’ve been making representation over the past two years and at no lesser level than to the prime minister. I have video clippings from Parliament where I have raised it on a number of occasions. Commitments have been made. The National Works Agency has indicated that it will cost about $80 million for it to be done and I have been making appeals to the minister of finance and directly to the prime minister,” Paulwell told the Observer.

“Up to recently, when we were doing the second supplementary estimates, I raised it on the floor and Mrs Holness, who is also Member of Parliament because it affects both East Kingston and East Rural St Andrew, I thought it [article] was a bit unfair that it was only being focused on East Rural, but it is both sides,” he said.

According to the MP he has been vocal in his insistence that the project was mishandled.

“I was the only one who attended a meeting of the Harbour View Citizens’ Association some months ago before the election – when they called their elected representatives to speak on the issue – and my position was very clear that I supported the residents, that the project that was done, was done badly, and it was done without the involvement of the Member of Parliament at the time because they wanted it to be non-partisan. And out of that now we see this scary problem that everytime it rains it does put the people in severe jeopardy,” Paulwell said.

In the meantime, he said the $80-million price tag, while not a huge one in the scheme of things, could not be footed by any one MP.

“They told me it would have been attached to the South Coast project that is being done by the Chinese and it therefore should commence in the new year, that’s what the minister of finance had assured me during the debate on the second supplementary estimates. So I am hoping, but it has to be done centrally. There is no way the Member of Parliament can find that money to fix the drains,” he said further.

“It is something that I believe is serious, it is an emergency, and it requires, urgent, urgent action,” Paulwell went on.

According to ODPEM at the time, Harbour Heights, a former Operation Pride (Programme for Resettlement and Integrated Development Enterprise) settlement, was chosen because it met the criterion of a compact settlement with residents at risk and vulnerable.

Addressing speculation by persons that the communities were informal settlements, he said “Harbour Heights has been an informal settlement but we are in the final phase of the Housing Agency of Jamaica issuing titles. I have been in touch with the agency so very shortly many of these persons will have their titles, but on the Harbour View side, which is Harbour Drive, these are homes that are owned with people with their titles. So on one side it is people who have invested who are affected and on the other side you have people who are about to receive their titles based on the providence fund that they have been a part of for some years.”