The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

WORKS and Utilities Minister Alfred Sears said the government will this year bring a revised building code to Parliament and will undertake consultation with all of the relevant stakeholders shortly.

Mr Sears made the remarks at a signing ceremony for the United Nations’ Multi-Country Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (MSDCF).

“In the Ministry of Works and Utilities, we’re currently reviewing the building code of The Bahamas because in the assessment reports which were done of the damage of Hurricane Dorian in Abaco and in Grand Bahama, we appreciate that we need to enhance and better support, build up the capacity of the inspectorate component of the ministry,” he said.

“In addition we need to make the building code more robust because the 180 miles an hour wind, tidal wave over the land of 20ft high — we have to reconceive how we put resilience in the built environment. So within this year, the ministry, the government will be presenting to Parliament a revised building code and consultation with all of the stakeholders will be underway shortly with respect to that. And that is one way in which we will be building resilience so that in the future we would have better preparedness in the built environment.”

In the Speech from The Throne, read during the opening of Parliament in October 2021, the Davis administration referred to plans to enhance the country’s building code.

“The government will introduce a new and progressive building code to increase resilience in the face of climate change,” Governor General Sir Cornelius A Smith said at the time.