Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der says the re­cent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion that over­hauled the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) will help ac­cel­er­ate hous­ing con­struc­tion across Trinidad and To­ba­go, ar­gu­ing that bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays have long frus­trat­ed ef­forts to ad­dress the na­tion's hous­ing short­age.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vis­it to the Mal­oney Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, Alexan­der de­fend­ed the pro­cure­ment amend­ments and sug­gest­ed they would re­move ob­sta­cles that pre­vi­ous­ly stalled ma­jor Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) projects.

"The HDC does not have the mon­ey to build 20,000 hous­es, but we have the ca­pac­i­ty to build 20,000 hous­es," Alexan­der said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ex­pand the use of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships, bring­ing in pri­vate fi­nanc­ing and de­vel­op­ers to con­struct hous­ing de­vel­op­ments while work­ing along­side the HDC.

"We are try­ing to build out as many com­mu­ni­ties as pos­si­ble through pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships be­cause that brings ex­ter­nal fund­ing in­to the mix and speeds up the process."

Alexan­der said the num­ber of homes even­tu­al­ly con­struct­ed would de­pend on the re­sponse from con­trac­tors and con­sor­tiums in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in new projects. How­ev­er, he main­tained that the coun­try's con­struc­tion sec­tor has the ca­pac­i­ty to meet am­bi­tious tar­gets.

"I still think now we can do that," he said, re­fer­ring to the gov­ern­ment’s promise to pro­vide 20,000 homes with­in their term in of­fice.

"We know that the last ad­min­is­tra­tion de­liv­ered 4,700 hous­es in 10 years. We are go­ing to do a lot more than that."

The com­ments come amid heat­ed po­lit­i­cal de­bate over the pro­cure­ment amend­ments, which Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have ar­gued are nec­es­sary to pre­vent projects from be­ing un­nec­es­sar­i­ly de­layed. Op­po­si­tion mem­bers and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors have ex­pressed con­cern that re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to chal­lenge pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions could weak­en over­sight and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The de­bate in­ten­si­fied af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned whether un­elect­ed sen­a­tors should have the pow­er to block leg­is­la­tion sup­port­ed by a gov­ern­ment hold­ing a clear elec­toral man­date.

As one of three sen­a­tors who faced the polls, Alexan­der was asked about his Cab­i­net col­leagues, par­tic­u­lar­ly At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate Dar­rell Al­la­har, hav­ing not faced the polls but con­tribut­ing to mak­ing and pass­ing leg­is­la­tion. He said un­like the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, those on the Gov­ern­ment side fought the elec­tion "as a team."

Alexan­der said in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were in­creas­ing­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al­i­ties fac­ing or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

"The in­de­pen­dents are not in the po­lit­i­cal gayelle. They're not on the ground and they have no clue; they are speak­ing from an elit­ist view, an ivory tow­er. I've asked them when last you walked in any of these com­mu­ni­ties? You see me, you are here with me, you see we go every­where, we walk every­where, we talk to the peo­ple on the ground."

He ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment had won of­fice with a man­date to tack­le crime, im­prove health­care and ed­u­ca­tion, low­er the cost of liv­ing, and ex­pand ac­cess to hous­ing.

"The Prime Min­is­ter has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, a man­date. She was vot­ed in­to of­fice on a mas­sive man­date from the peo­ple to end crime, de­liv­er hous­es, low­er the cost of food, qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion for every­body, and qual­i­ty health­care. We fo­cus on all of those things," Alexan­der said.

The min­is­ter al­so ques­tioned the vot­ing pat­terns of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

"We did a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of vot­ing pat­terns and based on their vot­ing pat­terns in the last year and sev­en months, all nine should have vot­ed with us. Sta­tis­tics ex­ist for a rea­son, you can­not tell me that those are nine in­de­pen­dent souls and they vote as a block, that doesn't hap­pen! One of them might ab­stain, one might say yes, but you're not get­ting that."

Mal­oney garbage is­sues to be ad­dressed

Alexan­der's vis­it to Mal­oney fo­cused on long­stand­ing com­plaints about waste man­age­ment and san­i­ta­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty.

On Mon­day, Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is again raised con­cerns of garbage pile-up in Mal­oney.

In Ju­ly, Robin­son-Reg­is ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to prop­er­ly main­tain the com­mu­ni­ty, while re­ject­ing Alexan­der's claims that cur­rent prob­lems stem from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Alexan­der, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed that the sit­u­a­tion is more com­plex than crit­ics have por­trayed.

He said a con­trac­tor ser­vices the area three times each week and con­ducts bulk-waste col­lec­tions twice month­ly. Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, one of the pri­ma­ry chal­lenges is il­le­gal dump­ing by peo­ple who do not live in the com­mu­ni­ty.

"The prob­lem with Build­ing 10, for the most part, are the out­siders bring­ing their garbage and dump­ing it on top of res­i­den­tial garbage," he said.

Alexan­der ex­plained that stan­dard garbage trucks are de­signed to col­lect bagged house­hold waste, while bulky items such as mat­tress­es, re­frig­er­a­tors and wash­ing ma­chines re­quire sep­a­rate equip­ment.

"A garbage truck is set up to pick up bags and throw them in­to a truck. It is not set up to take mat­tress­es and fridge and wash­ing ma­chines. So, when the two of them mix like what's hap­pen­ing there, the garbage truck can't take it. This works twice a month, so it caus­es a prob­lem. We're ask­ing the res­i­dents here to sort their stuff but they say it is not them, they say it is not them, the same as the out­siders that bring in their bulk waste and dump­ing it on top of their garbage."

He al­so point­ed to on­go­ing work to re­place rent­ed met­al bins with per­ma­nent con­crete fa­cil­i­ties through­out the de­vel­op­ment. Alexan­der said two new garbage bin sites have al­ready been com­plet­ed and four oth­ers are un­der con­struc­tion. He said ad­verse weath­er had slowed progress, forc­ing con­trac­tors to re­peat­ed­ly resched­ule work crews and de­liv­er­ies of ma­te­ri­als.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing res­i­dents' frus­tra­tions, Alexan­der ac­cused Robin­son-Reg­is of ex­ploit­ing the is­sue po­lit­i­cal­ly.

"The mem­ber of Par­lia­ment is aware of this so she had, I guess, every rea­son in the world to do a po­lit­i­cal stunt but it is not ground­ed in re­al­i­ty. The re­al­i­ty is we have to man­age that sit­u­a­tion. This is not a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, there is no way to stop peo­ple dri­ving their ve­hi­cles in here and dump­ing their garbage and that's the re­al­i­ty."

He added that of­fi­cials are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and have been di­rect­ed to pro­vide reg­u­lar up­dates on the progress of the new waste-dis­pos­al in­fra­struc­ture. De­spite the con­tin­u­ing dis­pute, he said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing the con­cerns raised by res­i­dents.

"Mal­oney mat­ters to this Gov­ern­ment!" he said.