On three of the four Thurs­days in June, this col­umn in­ter­ro­gat­ed the de­ci­sion by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s use of se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process­es to choose con­trac­tors for ma­jor hous­ing projects in Trinidad. The is­sue was high­light­ed: on June 4 un­der the head­line ‘Who will ben­e­fit from the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects?’ on June 11, with the head­line, ‘Will the OPR do the right thing?’ and on June 25, when the ques­tion was ‘Dif­fer­ent HDC process, same out­come?’

All three of those com­men­taries looked at the pro­cure­ment out­come of two State en­ti­ties, the Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

On April 17, Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties, the new state com­pa­ny, awared a $129.28 mil­lion con­tract to Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Com­pa­ny to pro­vide De­sign-Build-Fi­nance ser­vices for the con­struc­tion of sin­gle-fam­i­ly house­holds and du­plex­es at the Al­lam­by res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

Land­mark TT was in­cor­po­rat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2026. The com­pa­ny utilis­es a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) mod­el to de­vel­op un­der­utilised state lands in­to ful­ly planned res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties for mid- to up­per-in­come earn­ers.

On April 8, 2026, the HDC of­fi­cial­ly dis­closed that it pro­posed to award con­tracts to­talling over $3.4 bil­lion to 11 con­trac­tors for its De­sign-Build-Fi­nance hous­ing port­fo­lio.

Con­trac­tor*Pro­posed Con­tract Amount (TT$)

Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd*$1 bil­lion

Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­co Com­pa­ny Ltd*$446.0 mil­lion

Hakim Ho­sein Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd*$410.3 mil­lion

Trinidad Pro Con­struc­tion Ltd* $ 290.0 mil­lion

Kei­th’s Trans­port Ser­vices*$232.0 mil­lion

Bris­tol Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd*$229.0 mil­lion

Adam’s Con­struc­tion Ltd*$201.0 mil­lion

Nor­ris Trans­port En­ter­pris­es Co. Ltd*$193.0 mil­lion

CE Man­age­ment and Ser­vices Ltd*$184.0 mil­lion

Oil­field and In­dus­tri­al Hard­ware Ltd*$160.0 mil­lion

Ram­per­sad Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors and Equip­ment Ltd*$112.0 Mil­lion

To­tal*3.451 bil­lion.

In my view, that HDC award must be the lens through which the amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act is viewed.

By way of ex­am­ple, the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) trig­gered a re­view by the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) of the HDC’s in­tend­ed award of $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts to con­struct 3,700 hous­ing units through a com­plaint sub­mit­ted on April 9 based on in­for­ma­tion from a pri­vate cit­i­zen.

JCC pres­i­dent Fazir Khan said the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­cerns cen­tred on pos­si­ble breach­es of pro­cure­ment rules, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions that un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders were not prop­er­ly no­ti­fied dur­ing the pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion stage. He warned that such gaps un­der­mine fair­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic con­tract­ing.

A for­mal com­plaint filed by at­tor­ney Ran­dall Mitchell, a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, al­leg­ing that the HDC utilised a “se­lec­tive ten­der­ing” frame­work to de­lib­er­ate­ly steer the high-val­ue con­tracts to­ward a pre­de­ter­mined, pre­ferred car­tel of com­pa­nies, by­pass­ing statu­to­ry pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion trans­paren­cy rules.

In a YouTube video on April 16, for­mer PNM min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­leged that the HDC con­tract in­volved bid rig­ging.

“The way bid-rig­ging works is that if five of us were cho­sen—be­cause that is what it was. It was se­lec­tive ten­der­ing, not open ten­der­ing—know­ing that you want to give it to one of the five, know­ing that the oth­er four were not com­pe­tent to get the con­tract. And you end up giv­ing it to the per­son you want­ed to give it to.”

In a no­tice is­sued on April 14, the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) for­mal­ly di­rect­ed the HDC to pause on the award of the $3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings.

On Ju­ly 29, the OPR is­sued a no­tice up­dat­ing the pub­lic on its re­view of the HDC’s award of con­tracts.

“In car­ry­ing out its in­quiry, the Of­fice re­viewed and as­sessed the Record of Pro­cure­ment Pro­ceed­ings, sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, ex­pla­na­tions and clar­i­fi­ca­tions pro­vid­ed by the HDC, rel­e­vant da­ta from the pro­cure­ment de­pos­i­to­ry and oth­er ver­i­fi­able records avail­able in the pub­lic do­main.

“This as­sess­ment de­tect­ed is­sues in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the leg­isla­tive frame­work, as well as pro­ce­dur­al gaps which gave rise to de­fi­cien­cies in com­pli­ance rel­a­tive to the pub­lic pro­cure­ment frame­work,” the HDC said.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the re­port iden­ti­fied short­com­ings in the process used for sup­pli­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and in the rigour of the due dili­gence con­duct­ed dur­ing the pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion and eval­u­a­tion phas­es of the pro­cure­ment process.”

The OPR stat­ed that the ac­tion was tak­en pur­suant to its pow­ers un­der Sec­tions 14(1)(a), (c), and (d) of the Act.

The HDC is­sued an of­fi­cial No­tice of Can­cel­la­tion per­tain­ing to its pro­posed $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts on June 17, ter­mi­nat­ing the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings in the pub­lic in­ter­est un­der un­der Sec­tion 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

In an in­ter­view with Akash Sama­roo, Guardian Me­dia’s lead ed­i­tor-pol­i­tics on June 18, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to re­turn with an ex­pand­ed port­fo­lio of hous­ing projects that would elim­i­nate the is­sues of the scrapped $3.4 bil­lion award.

Alexan­der said, “We took the de­ci­sion to say, look, you’re not hap­py with this process, we’re go­ing to pull it. We’re go­ing to come back at it, where any of the is­sues that you had a con­cern with be­fore will not ex­ist...

“We re­al­ly don’t ap­pre­ci­ate wast­ing this time here, be­cause we re­al­ly want to de­liv­er the hous­es. So that’s why we’re adding more projects to the roll­out. So in­stead of 11, it might be 21...

“These same projects that have been pulled here will be reis­sued to­geth­er with more, and every sin­gle de­vel­op­er, be­cause that was the num­ber one com­plaint that we got, that some peo­ple felt like they didn’t get time to ten­der, so now every­body has a chance.”

As­sess­ing the amend­ments

It seems to me that Mr Alexan­der was clear that when the Gov­ern­ment re­tendered the hous­ing projects “any of the is­sues that you had a con­cern with be­fore will not ex­ist.” He point­ed out that the num­ber one com­plaint the ad­min­is­tra­tion got was and that “some peo­ple felt like they didn’t get time to ten­der.”

Quite rea­son­ably, I thought, Mr Alexan­der sug­gest­ed in the in­ter­view that all of the con­cerns that ex­clud­ed con­trac­tors had would be elim­i­nat­ed.

I won­der, then, if he is sat­is­fied that the pro­posed amend­ments live up to his com­ment that “any of the is­sues that you had a con­cern with be­fore will not ex­ist.”

It is im­por­tant to note that sec­tion 7 of the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion states that the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act does not ap­ply to the ser­vices pro­vid­ed to pub­lic bod­ies or state-con­trolled en­ter­pris­es, in­clud­ing le­gal ser­vices, ac­count­ing ser­vices and med­ical ser­vices.

The pro­posed amend­ments ex­pand the num­ber of ar­eas that the pro­cure­ment law does not ap­ply to in­clude: en­er­gy ser­vices in­clud­ing nat­ur­al gas and oil; na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty; pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing; pub­lic util­i­ties for wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty pow­er gen­er­a­tion in con­se­quence of an emer­gency; the ac­qui­si­tion of goods, ser­vices or works in con­se­quence of an emer­gency; such oth­er pro­cure­ment as the Min­is­ter, by or­der, may de­ter­mine.”

Ques­tions

* What does the fact that the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to ex­clude pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing from the purview of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act mean?

* Does it mean that the Min­istry of Hous­ing can re­turn to the se­lec­tive process of the HDC’s scrapped $3.4 bil­lion ten­der and di­vide the awards among those who con­tributed the most to the suc­cess­ful 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)?

* If pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing are ex­clud­ed from the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, does any con­trac­tor who did not con­tribute to the UNC’s 2025 elec­tion cam­paign have any hope of re­ceiv­ing a con­tract to build “pub­lic” hous­es?

* What mech­a­nism is in place to mit­i­gate shod­dy work, cost over­runs, late de­liv­ery and breach­es of con­tract among the suc­cess­ful re­cip­i­ents?

Dis­clo­sure: This com­men­tary was writ­ten on Wednes­day morn­ing, as the de­bate on the amend­ments was on­go­ing