Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The find­ings of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) projects and con­tracts could even­tu­al­ly be re­ferred to the po­lice, as the Gov­ern­ment moves to de­ter­mine how bil­lions of dol­lars were spent on de­vel­op­ments it says were in­her­it­ed in poor con­di­tion.

This was the word from Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der dur­ing a tour to sev­er­al HDC de­vel­op­ments on Fri­day

Alexan­der said the in­ves­ti­ga­tions had so far un­cov­ered sev­er­al con­cerns, adding the probes were nec­es­sary be­fore the Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted ad­di­tion­al pub­lic funds to stalled or in­com­plete de­vel­op­ments.

He said HDC of­fi­cials had pre­vi­ous­ly raised con­cerns about some of the projects, but “no one was lis­ten­ing.”

The Tre­strail Lands hous­ing project in D’Abadie was cit­ed as one of the prob­lem­at­ic projects.

Alexan­der said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team had con­demned the de­vel­op­ment.

“Now this is stand­ing here still, an­oth­er of the PNM’s hit list of projects that were con­struct­ed that have to be de­mol­ished. A lot of work that we are un­der­tak­ing right now is de­mol­ish­ing failed projects that the PNM left,” Alexan­der said.

Alexan­der al­so took the me­dia to Bon Air Gar­dens, a de­vel­op­ment on an 11-hectare site. He de­scribed it as an­oth­er failed project that suf­fered cir­cum­stances sim­i­lar to those iden­ti­fied at Tre­strail.

He said a cost-im­pact study was com­mis­sioned to de­ter­mine whether the de­vel­op­ment could be retro­fit­ted and re­paired rather than de­mol­ished. The ini­tial es­ti­mate was $20 mil­lion but warned the even­tu­al cost could be dou­ble or triple be­cause the full ex­tent of the prob­lems would on­ly be­come clear once en­gi­neers be­gan open­ing up beams and walls.

He said a struc­tur­al as­sess­ment con­duct­ed by the HDC found sig­nif­i­cant ev­i­dence of soil set­tle­ment, man­i­fest­ed through the type and fre­quen­cy of crack­ing in ma­son­ry struc­tur­al shear walls through­out the town­house blocks. The as­sess­ment al­so found that the town­house blocks in the ex­posed ar­eas were not con­struct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the struc­tur­al draw­ings and con­struc­tion prac­tices and tech­niques used on site were not in keep­ing with ac­cept­able in­dus­try stan­dards.

An HDC of­fi­cial point­ed to a re­tain­ing wall be­hind one of the build­ings which was joined to the foun­da­tion of a row of hous­es, say­ing this was not ac­cept­able con­struc­tion prac­tice.

Alexan­der said T&T has codes gov­ern­ing earth­quake re­sis­tance and claimed the town­hous­es did not meet the stan­dard.

“The HDC can­not guar­an­tee that these hous­es would stand in a se­ri­ous earth­quake. The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion can­not even at­test to the ve­rac­i­ty of the foun­da­tion of these build­ings,” he said.

Alexan­der al­so hit back at for­mer Hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who, he said, had de­scribed work car­ried out un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion as rou­tine main­te­nance.

“What Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is re­fer­ring to as rou­tine main­te­nance is garbage col­lec­tion, grass cut­ting, and pres­sure wash­ing to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in over-in­flat­ed con­tracts that are at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion of the board of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion,” Alexan­der claimed.

He said the HDC was al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing those con­tracts and doc­u­ments had been as­sem­bled for pos­si­ble re­fer­ral to law en­force­ment.

Alexan­der al­so re­spond­ed to Robin­son-Reg­is’ com­ments about an in­sur­ance con­tract award­ed to Com­pre­hen­sive In­sur­ance Bro­kers.

He claimed that dur­ing the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 2015 and 2025, one in­sur­ance bro­ker­age firm re­ceived HDC in­sur­ance con­tracts from 2015 through 2023. He said af­ter the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion reg­u­la­tions be­came law, the same com­pa­ny ben­e­fit­ed in 2024 and 2025.

He de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to award a more re­cent con­tract to Com­pre­hen­sive In­sur­ance Bro­kers, say­ing Agos­ti­ni In­sur­ance Bro­kers, 21st Cen­tu­ry In­sur­ance Bro­kers, Mabrell In­sur­ance Bro­kers and Com­pre­hen­sive In­sur­ance Bro­kers were in­vit­ed to ten­der based on the OPR data­base. Alexan­der said Mabrell was the on­ly com­pa­ny that did not sub­mit a bid and Com­pre­hen­sive was the low­est of the oth­er bid­ders.

He re­ject­ed what he de­scribed as Robin­son-Reg­is’ at­tempt to as­so­ciate the con­tract with the fact that a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly been a man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny. Alexan­der said the con­tract award­ed un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion saved tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

He con­trast­ed this with what he de­scribed as the sole-se­lect ap­proach used un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Alexan­der said the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were tak­ing place against the back­drop of sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial li­a­bil­i­ties in­her­it­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

He said the HDC in­her­it­ed $700 mil­lion in payables.

This in­clud­ed $300 mil­lion in con­trac­tors’ re­ten­tion fees, $300 mil­lion due to the em­ploy­ee pen­sion plan and $100 mil­lion due to the cor­po­ra­tion ex­ceed­ing its over­draft. He said an­oth­er $1.5 bil­lion was re­quired to com­plete works in progress.

“That is what we in­her­it­ed here, to­geth­er with a project like this,” Alexan­der said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had to con­front both the fi­nan­cial li­a­bil­i­ties and the phys­i­cal con­di­tion of the de­vel­op­ments.

“This here that you’re in, a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars, easy, it’s a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars. So, we’re talk­ing bil­lions of dol­lars,” he said.

Alexan­der said pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships were be­ing con­sid­ered as part of the re­sponse.

The prob­lems, Alexan­der said, ex­tend be­yond con­struc­tion and pro­cure­ment to home­own­ers who have been wait­ing years for le­gal ti­tle to their prop­er­ties.

He said the HDC had been open to le­gal ac­tion from the be­gin­ning and that ap­pli­cants re­mained free to pur­sue what­ev­er av­enues of re­dress they con­sid­ered ap­pro­pri­ate. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that many prospec­tive HDC home­own­ers did not have the fi­nan­cial re­sources to spend heav­i­ly on lawyers. He said the HDC al­so had a le­gal de­part­ment which would pur­sue mat­ters where nec­es­sary.

The Gov­ern­ment, he said, was putting mea­sures in place to re­view ex­ist­ing HDC projects, ad­dress main­te­nance prob­lems and en­sure res­i­dents even­tu­al­ly re­ceive prop­er ti­tles to their homes.

“We’re deal­ing with all of it, all of it,” Alexan­der said.

Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to en­sure the HDC could de­liv­er more hous­es while bring­ing ex­ist­ing de­vel­op­ments up to an ac­cept­able stan­dard.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, my role is to try and get us to a place where as many hous­es can be built and all of the hous­es that ex­ist, that we can bring them up to a sat­is­fac­to­ry stan­dard,” he said.

He said the HDC, un­der the Min­istry of Hous­ing, had an oblig­a­tion to all of its stake­hold­ers.

“We are go­ing to make sure that we take care of it,” he said.