Negligence needs to be punished
Were you aware that any building contractor must have their own general contractor liability insurance? Yes, they should and anyone endangered by a construction site can ask to see proof. The insurance should cover any bodily injury or property damage the firm accidentally causes to you, your family, and your property.
This is what is called the CAR policy or Contractors All Risk Insurance Policy. Depending on the scope of cover obtained, the CAR policy can extend to cover pedestrians if the site poses such risk. It can also cover third parties that come into the site. At the construction site, huge processes are employed, and even a slight act of negligence can bring down the entire project to a standstill. With the help of the CAR policy, the contractor and the employees along with others are saved by the surety of the earnings, as the insurance company pays them at the time of any loss or damage due to fire, theft, accident and other perils.
But many citizens aren’t aware of this. As a result many incidents pertaining to such perilous sites go unnoticed with no damage being paid to the affected party. Also most call for penalising negligent builders for their lackadaisical attitude.
A resident at Dehiwela went through a harrowing experience earlier this month. “Last Friday, the 6th of October started out as an ordinary day, however at around 11 am I almost lost my life. I had decided to spend the day with my family and so had a late breakfast. As I stepped out to feed the birds a wooden shaft almost 4 feet long fell right in front of me from the fourth floor of a partially constructed condominium building. My wife who was with our baby came rushing out as she heard the enormous thud and felt the vibration,” he told the Business Times. He said that both were shocked as realisation sunk in that had he taken just one step forward his life would have been over. “Worse still it could have been my Aunt who was about to leave for church who would fallen victim to this horrid incident. God forbid had it been my wife or baby who was there at the time, what would we have done,” he said noting that he informed 119 immediately and two police officers from the Dehiwala Police Station arrived.
To his disbelief what the police told him was that since neither a member of his family nor him had been injured by the wooden shaft, that they were unable to do anything. “When I informed our lawyer he too told me the same thing. Apparently the law only covers those who are injured. There isn’t any use is any law once our loved ones are injured or worse. All we ask is for a voice for the people. A voice that can speak before the damage is done.”
While nothing happened in this case, there should be measures to penalise builders for negligence, he said suggesting that what many citizens should call for is ‘safety’.
The insurer would cover the legal liability falling on the policyholder due to bodily injury or property loss suffered by the third party.
Most developers leave the CAR to the contractor and they buy the most basic of covers with very low cover per incident just to get by the law, according to industry sources. “Some also understate the number of employees at the site. All this allows the insurer to avoid a claim in the event of one due to the good faith being violated,” a source told the Business Times.
But there are certain builders who won’t let their contractors do this. “We get an insurance broker to advise us and get quotations from all reputed insurance companies and evaluate them for us. These are insurance professionals. Then we select an acceptable company and introduce them to the contractor as our appointed insurers for the project. The contractor does the insurance and bills us,” Hemaka Alwis, Chairman Fairway Holdings told the Business Times. The CAR policy must be separately designed from project to project, he said.