A simmering dispute over the state of the People’s Arcade in Montego Bay is likely to explode today as the Public Health Department says it will padlock the property, which it has declared a serious health hazard.

However, the health authorities could stay their action if, according to chief public health inspector for St James Lennox Wallace, the Jamaica Railway Corporation (JRC), which owns the property, gives a firm date to begin clean-up activity at the arcade.

“I will reach out to the general manager, Mr [Fitzroy] Williams on Monday (today), and if we do not receive anything satisfactory we have no other option but to close the property,” Wallace told the Jamaica Observer on Saturday.

However yesterday, Williams expressed surprise at Wallace’s comment, saying that clean-up work has already begun in the arcade and that Wallace has been copied on all communication between the railway corporation and the agencies involved in the effort.

Wallace was confirming a revelation by JRC Chairman Ferris Ziadie that the arcade is unsanitary.

“The health authorities have indicated to us that we’re sitting on an epidemic time bomb and it cannot be allowed to continue. The municipality has said that we need to get our act together and clean the place up because it is our asset,” Ziadie told the Observer two weeks ago.

The property, which once served as the railway terminus, is now overrun by squatters. Some are operating shops, while others have set up houses. Wallace estimates that there are just under 600 shops on the property and “probably 60 per cent of the people who operate business there, live there”.

However, there is no sewage system and the place is rat-infested.

“The place is so infested… rodents are nocturnal animals so you know that you mostly see them at nights, [so] when you can see them at 1:30 during the day it’s cause for concern,” Wallace said.

He said that the JRC had promised to contribute $1 million to match the funds the health department had allocated to a rodent-control programme, but he has not got a reply from the JRC.

“We could not touch there with the money that we have because it needed like about $2 million… so we are saying meet us halfway. They agreed, but up until today we haven’t heard from the railway corporation, and it is their property,” Wallace said.

Williams said yesterday that the JRC’s commitment of the $1 million was on the understanding that it would be included in funds for overall work on the arcade, as it could not cost that much for rodent control alone.

“What the chairman was speaking to was that we would put up that to clean the place, which we are doing. We have already cleaned the drains, we have paid for carting away of a lot of debris from the place. We are getting JPS to put in electricity. They are taking down the illegal connections first and they had promised me that they would have put in the lights on Wednesday of last week, but they haven’t yet put them in because they are still in the process of removing the illegal connections,” Wallace said.

He said that the National Water Commission has also been assisting with drain cleaning, but that work is not yet complete as they have encountered some difficulties due to the configuration of the drains.

“We are working with the public agencies to do as much as possible, and our estimate is that we are going to be spending perhaps no less than $5 million by the time we are done,” Wallace told the Observer.

Asked for a response to Wallace’s comment about shuttering the arcade, Williams said: “I am not sure why he would want to do that when we are in a process which we know, from the beginning, was not going to happen overnight. We sat in the mayor’s parlour sometime in July or August, we agreed on a set of activities that we would need to do, so I’m not sure why he would want to take that approach.”

He said that Wallace has been copied on all communication between the JRC and the different players, including the police, “because we agreed from day one that we would be partners in the process and we intend to work together”.

Despite the JRC’s declared willingness to deal with the problem, Ziadie and his management team are fuming about the way this matter has unfolded.

Ziadie, whose chairmanship is not yet two years old, told the Observer that in 1995 the St James Parish Council occupied the approximately 2.75-acre property without the JRC’s permission.

A document provided by the JRC states that in January 2002 the parish council “proposed to pay $100,000 per month to lease the property”.

However, two months later the parish council “withdrew from the lease” and in August that year cited problems with the vendors.

The document said that the parish council requested more time to deal with the problem but never did, nor did it enter into an agreement with the railway corporation.

“Now they have handed it back, saying they can’t manage it,” Ziadie told the Observer.

“We had a meeting with the municipality, the health authorities, and the police at the mayor’s office recently and it was agreed that this is a JRC asset and that something needs to be done… because it’s a blight on the city. They all agreed to give us their support, but we must lead,” Ziadie related.

He said the first thing that the JRC did was to assess the reality on the ground at the property. Then, they had a meeting with all the stakeholders in the arcade at which there was general agreement and satisfaction that an attempt was now being made to fix the problems, which the police have said include crime and drugs.

“So our plans are quite simple. First of all, we are going to try to remedy the ills there by fixing the sanitary issues,” Ziadie said. “Two, we’re fixing the lighting so it can’t be a den at night for criminality. And three, we have started a registration process to determine what sort of activities — commercial or residential — are taking place in each section of the arcade.

“That will help us to attempt to improve the conditions, because if we can’t register the persons and get them to be part of a uniformed programme it’s going to be very difficult for us to institute any form of rehabilitation and be successful at it,” he argued.

“The JRC did not get into this situation on its own,” Ziadie added. “However, we are now involved and we are going to do our best to improve the People’s Arcade so that it can add credibility to the commercial industry of Montego Bay and it can help those people who are doing business there to do better business. However, we need the support of all the Government agencies in St James to help us achieve the objectives which, I think, is what everybody wants to achieve.”