Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

While the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion is push­ing for the re­in­state­ment of 26 em­ploy­ees whose con­tracts were not re­newed, the chair­man of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion is de­fend­ing the move, say­ing the work­ers were “sur­plus to re­quire­ments.”

Call­ing the HDC a “sick cow”, Chair­man Feeroz Khan said it is “rid­dled with ticks” and must be al­lowed to heal.

The work­ers were as­signed to a sub­sidiary of the HDC, which is the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion-Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (HDC-CCL).

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that al­though the work­ers’ con­tracts had ex­pired, many had been “in­for­mal­ly” as­sured that they would be re­newed. Some em­ploy­ees, whose con­tracts end­ed as far back as Ju­ly 2025, con­tin­ued work­ing and re­ceiv­ing full pay, with no writ­ten in­di­ca­tion that their con­tracts would not be re­newed.

It is al­so be­ing claimed that sev­er­al work­ers whose con­tracts re­main valid un­til De­cem­ber 2025 were ter­mi­nat­ed ear­ly, with­out pri­or no­tice.

Their po­si­tions ranged from site su­per­vi­sors, project as­sis­tants, and se­nior project en­gi­neers.

PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said yes­ter­day that the union is aware of the mat­ter and an ini­tial dis­cus­sion was had on Mon­day, with a fol­low-up card­ed for this week.

“What we’re seek­ing is re­in­state­ment,” Thomas said.

Asked if she was sur­prised by the HDC’s move, the PSA pres­i­dent said, “Of course, I was shocked. But I need to get the con­text of what was tak­ing place. Be­cause I’m aware they’re the new com­pa­nies that were formed, I wasn’t sure whether or not it was in re­la­tion to the new com­pa­nies. So, I need­ed to get the facts in re­la­tion to what was tak­ing place. So, there was a bit of shock, but still a need to get to un­der­stand what was hap­pen­ing and why it was hap­pen­ing.”

But while the PSA has called for re­in­state­ment, the HDC may not be so in­clined.

The HDC chair­man said the cor­po­ra­tion can­not sus­tain con­tin­u­ous “blood suck­ing.”

“When CCL was formed, they were sup­posed to have an es­tab­lish­ment of 13 peo­ple. And they bloat­ed up to 68. HDC has lost $700 mil­lion last year and the year be­fore. On a month­ly ba­sis, the over­heads are over $40 mil­lion, and it just can’t be sus­tained. Con­tin­ue like that, the whole thing will crash,” he posit­ed.

Khan said even with los­ing the 26 em­ploy­ees, HDC will still be able to ful­fil its man­date of build­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing 20,000 homes in the next five years.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had to change a fail­ing strat­e­gy im­ple­ment­ed by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“If we have to give this cow a chance to heal, then we have to fix some of these things,” Khan stressed

An em­ploy­ee of CCL claimed that the en­ti­ty ac­counts for on­ly 5.6 per cent of HDC’s an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture but ef­fec­tive­ly car­ries out near­ly 80 per cent of the cor­po­ra­tion’s op­er­a­tional work­load, pri­mar­i­ly the con­struc­tion of hous­ing units. The HDC chair de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “flu­id” and could not say if oth­er con­tract em­ploy­ees will soon fol­low suit. He, how­ev­er, wel­comed dis­cus­sions with the PSA.