Hotel Tragedy: Inferior material used in construction — says McKenzie

Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie has said that an interim report from the Hanover Parish Council points to the use of inferior material in the Royalton Hotel, a section of which collapsed Tuesday morning, injuring several workers.

McKenzie made the disclosure during an interview Tuesday afternoon with Beyond the Headline host Dionne Jackson-Miller.

He said too that the report indicated that the developers had deviated from the plan approved by the parish council.

“We are very concerned because the report that I am reading from the Hanover Parish Council [is] that they have been in discussions with the hotel because of situation that they considered to be outside of the approval that was granted,” McKenzie added.

At the same time McKenzie said that he’s set up a committee to probe the circumstances surrounding the tragedy— and that he’s issued a cease work notice preventing any further construction work on the site for 30 days. The notice will be reviewed after the end of the 30 days, he said.

“I have just appointed a three-man committee, headed by EG Hunter, the head of the National Works Agency, Mr Norman Shand, city engineer in the [Kingston and St Andrew Corporation] and the chief technical officer in the Ministry of Local Government Mr Dwight Wilson to launch an immediate investigation into what took place on this site,” McKenzie said.

“They have been tasked with the responsibility to go down, dig in to find out what took place, what went wrong…,” McKenzie added.

He said: “We are going to do everything to ensure that if and when construction resumes that all letters of the approval that was granted by the Hanover Parish Council is observed.”

The Royalton Hotel is being constructed on the property which is the former Grand Lido Hotel.

A section of the building came crashing down about 6 am, injuring five workers, as workmen were pouring concrete.