JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der yes­ter­day called on the Op­po­si­tion to ex­plain what he de­scribed as spe­cial treat­ment al­leged­ly giv­en to a con­trac­tor in the award of a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) project.

Dur­ing an on­go­ing tour of stalled HDC de­vel­op­ments, Alexan­der in­vit­ed mem­bers of the me­dia to the Cit­rus Close De­vel­op­ment along the East­ern Main Road in Port-of-Spain, where he raised con­cerns about the project’s pro­cure­ment process and over­all vi­a­bil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, the con­trac­tor that ul­ti­mate­ly se­cured the con­tract was award­ed the project de­spite an­oth­er com­pa­ny hav­ing sub­mit­ted the low­est bid. He al­so claimed that the same con­trac­tor had been en­gaged to con­struct Bal­isi­er House.

The Cit­rus Close project is a de­sign-and-build de­vel­op­ment val­ued at $191 mil­lion and in­tend­ed to de­liv­er 191 apart­ments.

Alexan­der not­ed that the cost equates to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 mil­lion per apart­ment and ar­gued that such a price made the project fi­nan­cial­ly un­sus­tain­able.

“These apart­ments would take in ex­cess of 100 years for the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­coup the in­vest­ment with­out in­ter­est. With stan­dard bank­ing in­ter­est, you’re look­ing at 200 years,” Alexan­der said.

“The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, un­der Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, en­tered in­to an agree­ment to build hous­es that can­not be sold and could on­ly be rent­ed. Who did Camille Robin­son-Reg­is build these hous­es for, to rent at $800 a month? Who was com­ing to live in this hot zone, this gang-war zone?”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is for com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

Ac­cord­ing to HDC of­fi­cials, the project is ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten per cent com­plete de­spite more than $50 mil­lion al­ready be­ing spent, rep­re­sent­ing rough­ly 30 per cent of the con­tract val­ue.

Asked whether the project would pro­ceed, Alexan­der said a fi­nal de­ci­sion had not yet been made.

He al­leged that af­ter the con­tract was award­ed, the Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee al­tered the award and grant­ed it to a high­er bid­der, re­sult­ing in an ad­di­tion­al cost of about $250,000 per unit. He claimed there was a $54 mil­lion dif­fer­ence be­tween the two bids.

Alexan­der fur­ther al­leged that al­though a com­plaint was filed re­gard­ing the con­tract, which was award­ed in 2023, no ac­tion had been tak­en by the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR).

Ear­li­er this year, a State con­tract was can­celled af­ter the OPR launched a probe in­to the pro­cure­ment process used by Land­mark­TT for the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in Corinth. The reg­u­la­tor said it ini­ti­at­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing con­cerns about the use of se­lec­tive ten­der­ing rather than open com­pet­i­tive bid­ding.

Alexan­der said the HDC is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a num­ber of au­dits, in­clud­ing re­views of its fi­nances, staffing lev­els and equip­ment.

He added that his pri­ma­ry fo­cus re­mains on the hous­ing stock, not­ing that some homes had been con­struct­ed with­out deed ti­tles, cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for prop­er­ties to be built and dis­trib­uted with­out prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty.
“We are ex­am­in­ing all as­pects of the hous­ing pro­gramme to de­ter­mine where im­prove­ments are need­ed and to en­sure prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty for pub­lic re­sources,” Alexan­der said.