Forde doubles down that laws coming for negligent land owners Loop Barbados

Black Immigrant Daily News

Landowners, who are guilty of leaving their lots unkempt, might be seeing an additional charge on their land tax or face a fine.

Legislation is afoot to implement measures against those individuals whose property is not kept up to standard.

Responding to the question of what will be done to curb the fact that too many accidents or near-misses are occurring daily due to overrun lots obstructing drivers’ views at numerous points across the island, Minister of Environment and National Beautification Adrian Forde told Loop News, the Prime Minister has asked the Attorney General to amend the Health Services (1969) Act, which will then speak to ensuring private property is kept clean.

“The Prime Minister has asked the Attorney General to bring a change to the Health Services (1969) Act so that Barbadians who continue in this maladaptive pattern of behaviour, we would have to legislation to say to them if you don’t clean or clear your spot and make it tidy within a period of time given by the Ministry then we will go and do the remedial work to make that space or environment clean, healthy and green,” said the Minister.

Minister Forde indicated that the “logistics” of the legislation were being worked out, but divulged that landowners could possibly be ticketed or receive an additional fee on their land tax.

He stressed that “enough is enough” and Government must now take measures.

“The whole issue of misused land and the fact that landowners are not taking care of their property goes far beyond aesthetics…It is a health threat.”

“I can’t understand for the life of me, why a person would have a plot of land and not be responsible for it. I cannot fathom it. It does not speak to who we are as a person as a community or as a country. You have to take responsibility and ownership for that which concerns you as simple as that,” he emphasised.

At the end of 2019, just before the COVID pandemic, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley had first said that legislation – civil penalties like ticketing, was coming to make these negligent property owners pay up, and again at the most recent 83rd Annual Conference, she lamented that these vacant lots are still a pain point, an eyesore and must be cleaned.

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