And another project the MIDH is trying to tackle is the state of the court houses following Hurricane Lisa. You saw collapsed ceilings, flooded floors, and ripped off roofs, but Minister Espat has specific plans for these buildings, and for the placement of the judiciary. Here's what he told us today.
Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development & Housing
"A budget was given to us of 1.5 million dollars to fix the old treasury building, that's where the Magistrate Court was and the Supreme Court Chief Justice chambers was upstairs. We have now finished the preliminary design, I told Cabinet that we shouldn't, in my opinion, put the judicial complex back there. I believe that those are historical buildings and we should preserve them to its original level. Cabinet is in the transition of accepting that and we are in the process of proposing a judicial complex at the Lake I Boulevard area. That will not be done through MIDH, that will be done through the Ministry of Finance, there's a new program they will be doing called PPP which is private public partnerships so the concept we have done, we have started to remodel the roof of the treasury building so that will be the first phase and from there we will go and do the remodeling of the rest of the building so that's online already. I think around a year you should have the building to an acceptable level and then by that time government will decide what is the end use of the building and then we will be able to complete it, I hope it will become a cultural center and a museum. I just think we have lost all our old buildings, we don't have any, and the city needs something where we can remind ourselves where we came from and where we are, I think that's a part of our culture that we have to look at."
