WHO IS responsible for cleaning and restaining Wendy Jemmotts’ house – the National Housing Corporation or Jada Construction?
That is what the 56-year-old resident of Jessamy Avenue, Bayville, St Michael, wants to know.
Her house is obliquely opposite the new high-rise units which were recently built by Jada Construction at Dalkeith on behalf of the NHC.
The construction is over and the colourful units now stand ready to be occupied. But Jemmott’s home is still blanketed in dust, both inside and outside, as a result of the many months of construction work.
But her attempts to have her house restored to its original state have hit a wall.
Jemmott has lived in the area since 1993 and said she had her house restained shortly after the construction work started, not expecting that she would be living with dust raining down on her daily.
She recalled that her neighbour, Florence Collymore, who is a chronic asthmatic, had to be relocated by the NHC for 18 months, because the dust was affecting her.
When the dust started to infiltrate her own home, Jemmott said she walked over to the Environmental Protection Department, also on Dalkeith.
“They asked me if I live next to the lady who was resited I said ‘yes’ and they told me go home and clean my house because they don’t have enough officers to check on everything.”
Disappointed, Jemmott said she spoke to Jada’s project manager on the site, Danny Atwell, when marl was placed along the street in front of her house which made the dust situation even worse.
“The road was blocked off for weeks and the dust use to blow over and blow over and I keep telling them that it humbugging me. I was living in my house with a mask on my face,” Jemmott cried, explaining that she too was asthmatic.
She said Atwell eventually visited her and she took him on tour of her “dust-filled” home.
“I showed him how much dust was on my bed and on my chairs and he told me when they were finished the job that he would send two guys to power-wash the house. I told him that I had it power-washed by a company and it still dried back white so it would have to be restained.
Some weeks later Jemmott said a workman turned up at her house and handed her a bottle of Disiclin and a pack of wet cloths, compliments of the project manager, to clean her house. “It was very insulting,” Jemmott said as she held up the items.
However, when construction finally finished in January, Jemmott said she called Jada, only to be informed that Atwell was no longer employed there. She was subsequently put on to a man named Jeff Mager.
He came over and I showed him my house. He told me he didn’t see anything in writing and he would speak to Mr Ian Foster at NHC.
After not hearing back from him, Jemmott said she packed her blowout bed, which she had bought to protect her mattress but which was now filled with dust and some other dusty items and took them to the NHC where she showed them to Foster.
He told her that he would speak to an official at Jada and get back to her.
“That was in February and this is now May and I have not heard anything from him.”
Jemmott said she was frustrated with the runaround she was getting.
She said dust and leaves from trees were still blowing on to her property from the the construction site and she and her neighbour, who moved back into her house earlier this year, are wondering what will happen to them when the units were fully occupied, in terms of the dust and traffic, which will now be traversing the small neighbourhood.
When contacted, Mager, advised this column to speak to the office manager at Jada, Paul Lewis. He reported, however, that he was not aware of the situation and would have to look into it.
General Manager of NHC Lanette Napoleon said the matter was being actively investigated and she had spoke to Jemmott yesterday.
mariabradshaw@nationnews.com
