Judge awards family $1M for collapsed house

Amid threats to its customers to pay water rates or face seizure of their properties, the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) has been found by the High Court to have been the cause of a Princes Town family losing their home to a burst water main.

Since 2012, Ayub Hosein, 59, his wife and two sons have been forced to rent an apartment, but hope of the tranquillity of a place to call home came yesterday with the judgement of Justice Eleanor Donaldson-Honeywell who ordered WASA to pay $1.1 million to the family.

Delivering the 19-page judgement on Monday, Donaldson-Honeywell recalled Hosein’s lawsuit in which she stated that his house was built in 1986 with a concrete pile foundation.

In 2011, Hosein discovered clear water surfacing in the backyard and under the stairway of his home. He later discovered that the source of the water emanated from a leak on a WASA main pipeline on the road in front of the house. Hosein contacted WASA hotline and complained. However, the judge added, WASA personnel failed to respond.

Donaldson-Honeywell then went on to state that Hosein noticed cracks in the foundation and walls of his house at Realize Junction Road near Princes Town. Hosein persisted with numerous calls, the judgement stated, and WASA responded on September, 16, 2011 with their workers who attempted to repair the leak. After they had dug the road, work had to be abandoned due to what the judge described as “great volumes of water under the surface which had to be pumped out”. After a week, the repaired water line ruptured again and WASA workmen returned and repaired it.

The following week, the leak appeared again when the same water line ruptured and workers returned. On that occasion they replaced it, but by that time, Hosein’s house had caved and eroded from its original position. Hosein did a valuation on his property. He then retained KS&P Ltd to prepare a structural Evaluation as well as chartered Quantity Surveyors of Welch, Morris and Associates Ltd.

Jusitce Donalson-Honeywell stated that the collapse of Hosein’s house was best explained by the broken water line.

Donaldson-Honeywell ordered WASA to pay Hosein $1,112,000.00 for reconstruction of the family’s house.

The judge further ordered that WASA must pay the Hosein family $25,000 for rental accommodation and $49,791.95 for reinforcement works. Payment of $4,000, $1,000, $4,000 and $500 were also ordered by the judge for cost of the various reports and photos Hosein took of the collapsed house.

Contacted yesterday, Hosein said, “Being without a house since 2012, was like hell. I have a wife and two sons. Do you know what it is like to live in somebody else’s home. I did that.”

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