Residents rue the day they used amateur contractors
THE APPEARANCE of huge cracks in the walls of several concrete buildings on the East Coast of Demerara during the last dry season has raised questions about the building code governing construction in the area.
The cracks,which began to appear after a prolonged, countrywide dry spell in 2010, caused huge fissures to appear in the earth, and lowered the level of water in the conservancy, to the point of rationing in certain areas.
Weather watchers referred to that period as another of the recent El Niño phenomenon, occurring on average every five years. And some have attributed that phenomenon to global warming.
Structural damage is most apparent in the Paradise Housing Scheme, also known as the Dazzell Housing Scheme, a relatively new community on the East Coast of Demerara.
Most of the buildings in that community are concrete constructions.  

Contractors’ practice

Contractors have sworn that they abide by their practice of laying the foundations of the buildings to a depth of between 12 and 18 inches. They say this is standard depth for the foundations of small buildings in Guyana.
Every contractor spoken to invariably claimed to have scrupulously followed the strictest standards in laying the foundations of the buildings he constructed at Dazzell Housing Scheme; and each accused their competitors of laying shallow and faulty foundations, thus causing the noticeable cracks on the walls of almost all of the concrete homes in the area in question and elsewhere.  
According to the tradesmen, the fissuring of the earth during the dry spell caused the foundations of the buildings to ‘move’, thus causing the cracks.
“I have cracks in my walls up to an inch wide,” one Seventh Street resident told this newspaper. “My verandah is almost separated from my house,” another from 11th Street reported.  
Though no agency has as yet undertaken a scientific survey of the buildings in ‘Dazzell’, it is surmised that most are damaged.

Soil to blame

In their defence, the contractors are claiming that the soil in the area is the clay type, common on the coast of Guyana, but experts dismiss this as a reason for the problem. They posit that had the contractors done their jobs properly, digging the foundations to the right depth, fissures in the earth could not have affected the buildings.
Sources contend that whenever construction has to be undertaken, amateur contractors appear, falsely claiming to have civil engineering knowledge and work experience in most cases; and that is the source of the problem.
“In the early stages of this housing scheme,” an 11th Street resident said, “we had instances of structures collapsing or sinking because of faulty construction.”
Residents say that when they first started establishing homesteads in the area, they were approached by many persons claiming to be contractors, some of whom turned out to be half-baked carpenters or masons at best.  
The problem is particularly painful to those residents who saw the acquisition of land in the area as an opportunity to establish their dream houses.  
That apart, almost all the residents claimed to have built their houses at great personal sacrifice, and without help from any financial institution.
Each crack in each wall of each hard-earned house is matched by a similar crack in each heart of each owner, who each mourns for his/her investment.
“If the building was made of wood, it would be easy to replace walls. But it is not easy to just repair a concrete building like that,” one distressed resident lamented.