Rapheal John-Lall

Six years af­ter the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) start­ed its lux­u­ry hous­ing de­vel­op­ment project at La Forter­esse, Long Cir­cu­lar, the project is three-quar­ter com­plet­ed says its pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke. The con­tro­ver­sial project, which was the brain­child of for­mer PSA pres­i­dent Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, has been the sub­ject of much dis­pute over the last few years. At­tempts to reach Bap­tiste-Primus were un­suc­cess­ful. In 2011, Duke and mem­bers of the PSA ex­ec­u­tive, ac­com­pa­nied by six po­lice of­fi­cers, en­tered the de­vel­op­ment and took pos­ses­sion of it. At that time, DTL gen­er­al man­ag­er Fran­cis Delpesh told the Guardian that the de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny had a 2003 con­tract with the PSA un­der Bap­tiste-Primus that vest­ed the land to La Forter­esse. Delpesh said the hous­ing project start­ed in 2006 and ac­cord­ing to the con­tract, the com­pa­ny was sup­posed to give the PSA $40 mil­lion on com­ple­tion. The PSA would have fur­ther ben­e­fit­ed by set­ting up a com­pa­ny to do main­te­nance work on the de­vel­op­ment, Delpesh said. When con­tact­ed by the Guardian for an up­date on the project last week, DTL de­clined to give a com­ment at this time. Duke told the Guardian at PSA's of­fice, two Wednes­days ago, that since that in­ci­dent last year, the trade union, which rep­re­sents thou­sands of pub­lic ser­vants, had got over all hur­dles and the project is near­ing com­ple­tion.

"There are the du­plex­es, which are clos­est to the road, they are al­most com­plet­ed. Based on the last re­port, all they need to do is in­stall the kitchen and things like that. The en­tire project is about 75 per cent com­plete. All to­geth­er there are 99 units-du­plex­es, triplex­es, sin­gle units and con­do­mini­ums. When it is even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed, it all de­pends on the de­vel­op­er. All de­vel­op­ers through­out the world have their chal­lenges and this de­vel­op­er has its own chal­lenges. The last time we com­mu­ni­cat­ed they were work­ing fever­ish­ly and they were say­ing they want to com­plete by De­cem­ber 2012. They paved all the roads in­side the com­pound. They have dug out the area for the swim­ming pool, so they are mov­ing ahead," he said. Duke said the project was sup­posed to have orig­i­nal­ly been com­plet­ed in 18 to 24 months from its start date in 2006. "The PSA hous­ing project was brought to the mem­ber­ship as a grand idea that was to in­ject mil­lions of dol­lars in­to the PSA ac­counts and was sup­posed be the flag­ship of what the PSA can do busi­ness-wise. Talks be­gan around 2003 and the build­ing project start­ed in 2006. To­day, it is near com­ple­tion. It has tak­en about six years so far," he said. He said it would be im­prop­er for him to say how much the cost over­runs had amount­ed to, but the de­vel­op­ment was do­ing bet­ter than many of the oth­er stalled projects that ex­ist around the coun­try now.

"When we look at oth­er projects go­ing on for much longer, with re­gards to cost over­runs, I would say the PSA project is do­ing quite well. I came and met a re­la­tion­ship in place in which DTL was the strate­gic busi­ness part­ner and the de­vel­op­ment provider for PSA. In 2011 we in­ter­vened and since then, the project has con­tin­ued at a rapid rate. DTL was con­tract­ed to de­vel­op the hous­ing and the land and the con­tract is still in place. They are do­ing the con­struc­tion, all the in­fra­struc­ture works. At the end of the day, they will give the clients the keys to the hous­es," he said. Ac­cord­ing to Duke, the apart­ments have been sold in the price range of be­tween $1.8 mil­lion and $3.5 mil­lion for the units. "They have all been sold for a quite a while now. None is avail­able. Once the project is com­plet­ed the home­own­ers will be mov­ing in. The tar­get now is De­cem­ber 2012. If we do not meet that, we will set a new tar­get for com­ple­tion in 2013." He said the en­tire project when com­plet­ed will cost about $100 mil­lion. "The fi­nanc­ing for this is in the hands of DTL, the de­vel­op­er. We gave them the land and they were sup­posed to pro­duce the fi­nance," he said. Once com­plet­ed, Duke is hop­ing that it would gen­er­ate "mil­lions of dol­lars."

"This is a high-rise ex­pen­sive com­pound and it is not de­signed for mem­bers. It is de­signed to gen­er­ate a cer­tain amount of mon­ey and rev­enue to off­set our own build­ing projects we have for the fu­ture. We have not start­ed any of these projects as yet but once we ac­quire the land in cer­tain strate­gic lo­ca­tions, rev­enue from this would be used to keep cost on these projects at a min­i­mum."

He al­so spoke of their re­la­tion­ship with the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). "We are part­ner­ing with the HDC in terms of gov­ern­ment hous­ing. Right now we are look­ing at gov­ern­ment hous­ing for mem­bers to dis­trib­ute to them. HDC has com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing us to de­vel­op and do build­ing projects with us. These will be low-cost homes," he said. Duke spoke about pos­si­ble build­ing projects in the fu­ture. "Our strat­e­gy is sim­ple. As an ex­ec­u­tive, we have not done any new ini­tia­tives yet but we have sim­ply tried to man­age what ex­ist­ed when I be­came pres­i­dent. I have tried to make the PSA valu­able and ac­ces­si­ble to all. We have our own pro­grammes on ra­dio and TV. We are putting to­geth­er a newslet­ter. We want to get in­to the in­fra­struc­ture busi­ness and do more for mem­bers. We in­tend to ren­o­vate all our prop­er­ties. We want to make use of this prop­er­ty we are on here in Port-of-Spain. Make full use of the prop­er­ty in To­ba­go. We want to own and build a struc­ture in Ari­ma, cen­tral and south," he said.