Brasso woman lives in fear of police station

Monica Crawford, 78, is a woman who has toiled long and hard and wants to live out the rest of her years in peace and comfort. Instead, she has to run to a neighbour’s house to use their toilet and lives in fear that a newly-constructed portion of her house will collapse.

Crawford lives in Brasso Village and when construction began in 2012 on the new Brasso Police Station, next to her house, she was elated. The Urban Development Corporation (Udecott) hired French contractor Bouygues Batiment T&T Construction Company to build the station.

“I said this is what Brasso needs, to have proper facilities for the police to do their job,” Crawford told Newsday. She added, “I never knew the impact that building would have on my life.”

The construction was completed in 2015 but Crawford’s woes had only just begun. She said that a few weeks after police officers moved in, she woke up one morning morning and there was a big gaping hole next to her cesspit. She alerted officers at the station, who notified Udecott.

“They came and built something to collect the water but within a few weeks the land began to slip and I realised the piece of my house with the toilet and bathroom had started to collapse.” The elderly woman was forced to move out of the wooden part of her house for fear it would collapse. “I started building a concrete room in front around the same time they started building the station. It’s a good thing I had that piece to move in or I would be living in the road.

But is my pension I was saving to build there so I don’t have money put down to fix anything,” Crawford lamented.

Her toilet, bathroom and cesspit have been destroyed by the slippage. “It is two years now I running by a neighbour to use their toilet, if rain falling, if the sun hot or if is the middle of the night and I want to go, I have to run across by them.”

A new cesspit cannot be constructed as the land continues to slip. On November 30, 2015, Udecott senior Project Manager Hollis Eversley gave Crawford a copy of a letter sent to Bouygues informing the contractor of the damage to her property. The letter also made reference to the land slip threatening the station’s newly constructed pump room.

Since then, legal letters have gone back and forth between Crawford, Udecott and Bouygues but all have been to no avail. Crawford said that last Wednesday she was visited by Eversley at her home. “He brought a document for me to sign, a waiver stating I would accept $15,000 to construct something to stop the landslip and purchase a septic tank.

“That is a joke, I told him I must be old and poor and from Brasso but that don’t mean I dotish. I know what a waiver is and I am not signing that!”

As the end of the year approaches, Crawford said she has no choice but to start 2018 in the same condition. “I told them, I will see a new year in this place as it is but come January I protesting in front everybody office, I will go and go until I drop because I sure if I was related to some minister, I would never have to go through this.”

Newsday contacted Eversley who confirmed he is aware of the situation at Crawford’s home and that he visited her home last week. “Yes, I am aware of her situation and we have tried to assist her as much as we could,” Eversley said. “However she has elected not to accept our assistance.”

Pressed for details, Eversley directed further questions to Udecott but added, “The situation is not as simple as she (Crawford) thinks it is.”