SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd, a com­pa­ny linked to for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Fos­ter Cum­mings, op­er­at­ed on oral con­tracts for cer­tain months in 2017 and 2018 at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

Doc­u­ments show that the HDC, through for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons and Kly­don, ver­bal­ly agreed for the com­pa­ny to pro­vide grass cut­ting ser­vices at Roys­to­nia in Cou­va for $250,000 a month.

What be­gan ver­bal­ly in Sep­tem­ber 2017 was lat­er rat­i­fied months lat­er.

The con­tract, which was ex­tend­ed over the years and even­tu­al­ly end­ed on De­cem­ber 31, 2025, was to cut grass op­po­site the Roys­to­nia Gov­ern­ment Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre.

Doc­u­ments showed on De­cem­ber 18, 2017, HDC’s then di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er es­tate man­age­ment, Lar­ry Mc Don­ald, sought a re­quest for rat­i­fi­ca­tion of award of con­tract and pay­ment from Lyons to be made to Kly­don to con­duct grass cut­ting ser­vices and re­moval of de­bris at the open fields ad­ja­cent to the Roys­to­nia EC­CE (Cen­tre) for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber to De­cem­ber 2017 at their re­quest.

The let­ter said that a long-term con­tract for the main­te­nance of these ar­eas will be im­ple­ment­ed from Feb­ru­ary 2018.

Kly­don, the let­ter said, was iden­ti­fied as hav­ing a his­to­ry of good per­for­mance for sim­i­lar works with the HDC and was avail­able to mo­bilise im­me­di­ate­ly to ad­dress the prob­lem. It stat­ed that Kly­don, a con­trac­tor with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, was one of two com­pa­nies “se­lect­ed to car­ry out these works in the sum of $150,000 VAT ex­clu­sive.”

As seen in the com­pa­ny reg­istry, Kly­don’s di­rec­tors are Donet­ta Pierre and One­ka May­ers.

Pierre was the for­mer sec­re­tary of Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed, owned by Cum­mings and his wife, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al re­turns.

Dis­crep­an­cy in con­tract

The $150,000 fig­ure, which had been typed in the doc­u­ment, was crossed out and changed to $250,000 in writ­ing with Mc Don­ald’s ini­tials at­tached.

“Please be ad­vised that these costs have been cal­cu­lat­ed on the ba­sis of rates pre­de­ter­mined by HDC’s Quan­ti­ty Sur­vey­ors and re­viewed by the Di­vi­sion­al Man­age­ment, Es­tate Man­age­ment and deemed fair, ac­cu­rate and ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try stan­dards,” the let­ter stat­ed.

One of Kly­don’s in­voic­es, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 4, 2017, showed the HDC was billed $180,000 for grass cut­ting, $25,000 for re­moval of de­bris and $45,000 for re­moval of bulk garbage and clear­ing of il­le­gal dump sites.

These ser­vices amount­ed to $250,000, in­clu­sive of 12.5 per cent VAT, bring­ing the to­tal bill to $281,250

On De­cem­ber 19, 2017, HDC in­formed Kly­don that the cor­po­ra­tion had rat­i­fied “the oral award that was made” to its com­pa­ny to per­form the work for $250,000 (VAT ex­clu­sive) and that they are re­quired to sup­ply a let­ter iden­ti­fy­ing the per­son(s) au­tho­rised to ac­cept pay­ment on be­half of the com­pa­ny.

A Feb­ru­ary 23, 2018, let­ter from HDC al­so showed that Kly­don of 33 Ceme­tery Street, Per­se­ver­ance Vil­lage, Cou­va, was award­ed a March 1 to May 31, 2018, con­tract to per­form grass cut­ting on the said Roys­to­nia land for the month­ly sum of $251,710 VAT ex­clu­sive.

A HDC let­ter dat­ed Ju­ly 15, 2021, al­so in­formed Kly­don of its con­tract with the cor­po­ra­tion dat­ed 3/2/2018 for the pro­vi­sion of month­ly grass cut­ting ser­vices at Roys­to­nia EC­CE, Salac­ca Dri­ve, and “to all writ­ten ex­ten­sions for your con­tin­ued month­ly ser­vices up­on the ex­pi­ra­tion of said con­tract, the most re­cent be­ing the ex­ten­sion for the pe­ri­od end­ing June 30, 2021.”

The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that, “up­on re­view of your now-ex­pired ex­ten­sion pe­ri­od, and up­on con­sid­er­a­tion of the HDC’s pol­i­cy re­quire­ments and oblig­a­tions, we ad­vised that go­ing for­ward we wish to es­tab­lish for­mal pe­ri­ods of en­gage­ment. There­fore, we ad­vise that we shall of­fer a new en­gage­ment of ser­vices to you for a pe­ri­od com­menc­ing Au­gust 1, 2021 and end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2021, at a rate of $153,234.”

The let­ter did not say if this fig­ure was VAT in­clu­sive or ex­clu­sive.

Kly­don al­so re­ceived a let­ter of award from HDC on March 21, 2022, for grass cut­ting ser­vices at Roys­to­nia for three years that com­menced from Jan­u­ary 1, 2022, to De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

“Please be ad­vised that your con­tract has been ex­tend­ed with the same terms and con­di­tions as stat­ed in your con­tract from Jan­u­ary 1, 2022, to De­cem­ber 31, 2024, at the cost of $204,312 (VAT ex­clu­sive) per month,” the let­ter stat­ed.

When VAT is added to this bill, HDC would have paid Kly­don ap­prox­i­mate­ly $230,000 each month.

Over these 36 months, Kly­don would have col­lect­ed $8.2 mil­lion.

HDC al­so is­sued a Jan­u­ary 17, 2024, let­ter to Kly­don’s di­rec­tor, Donet­ta Pierre, in­form­ing her that an ex­ten­sion with the same terms and con­di­tions in its con­tract had been grant­ed at the cost of $204,312 VAT ex­clu­sive per month.

Kly­don’s oth­er HDC con­tracts

But grass-cut­ting ser­vices were not the on­ly job Kly­don had at the HDC.

Ac­cord­ing to Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­istry doc­u­ments, Kly­don re­ceived at least $20 mil­lion in oth­er HDC con­tracts be­tween 2020 and 2023.

$12,896,656.71 - HDC - Paid - Oct 1, 2022 to Au­gust 31, 2023

$3.85 mil­lion - In­di­an Trail Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre - Ude­cott

$1.74 mil­lion - Ed­in­burgh 500 Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre - Ude­cott

$2,447,550 - Waste dis­pos­al at HDC Cy­press Hills Phas­es 1A, 1B & 1C - 4/15/2025

$2,475,900 - Waste dis­pos­al at HDC Pleas­antville

$2,253,259.32 - Paid - Oct 1, 2022 to Au­gust 31, 2023

Go­ing fur­ther back, ac­cord­ing to Ude­cott doc­u­ments, be­tween 2010 and Au­gust 2022, Kly­don re­ceived $19.2 mil­lion in con­tract pay­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to wit­ness state­ments pro­vid­ed in 2022 by for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al in her le­gal mat­ter with Cum­mings, “Pi­cal and Rivulet gave rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters in favour of Kly­don and con­firmed their sta­tus as sub­con­trac­tors as part of the pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion pack­age ad­dressed to Cepep. I ob­tained that afore­men­tioned in­for­ma­tion through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act and a copy of the let­ter dat­ed 7th Ju­ly 2022 from CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed ad­dressed to my at­tor­ney at law.”

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk had re­port­ed on pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments that a let­ter from Rivulet In­vest­ment man­ag­er Sheena Shep­pard stat­ed that “The Rivulet In­vest­ment Group is pleased to in­form you, Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd … is one of our sub-con­trac­tors on our Bon Air South Con­struc­tion Site.”

A sec­ond let­ter from Pi­cal Ser­vices stat­ed that “Please be ad­vised that Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed sub­con­tracts Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed … to col­lect garbage at Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas.”

Ac­coun­tant Joel Ed­wards, who served as CEPEP Chair­man be­tween 2023 and 2025, was list­ed as Kly­don En­ter­pris­es’ ac­coun­tant.

He was al­so Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed’s ac­coun­tant.

Both Cum­mings and As­so­ciates and Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed are reg­is­tered at the same busi­ness ad­dress—Unit 2, Metro Build­ing, Noel Street, Cou­va.

Metro Build­ing is the Metro Ho­tel in Cou­va, owned by the PNM’s 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions can­di­date for Point-a-Pierre, Mukesh Ram­s­ingh.

Among those who formed part of the screen­ing com­mit­tee for Ram­s­ingh’s se­lec­tion was Cum­mings.

‘$300 mil­lion paid over

ten years to one man’

At a press con­fer­ence on Jan­u­ary 4, HDC’s chair­man, Feeroz Khan, ad­mit­ted that over the last ten years, the cor­po­ra­tion is­sued main­te­nance con­tracts with­out ten­ders “to cer­tain friends, fam­i­lies and fi­nanciers of the last ad­min­is­tra­tion that run at a rate of about $150 mil­lion a year. That is an­oth­er $1.5 bil­lion that has been spent on con­tracts main­ly aimed at re­ward­ing per­sons who were friends, fam­i­lies and fi­nanciers of that last ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Khan said HDC was pay­ing “al­most half a mil­lion dol­lars” a month to cut grass in and around Cou­va to com­pa­nies as­so­ci­at­ed with a for­mer MP, whom he did not name.

Khan named Pi­cal Ser­vices, Rivulet In­vest­ments Ltd and Sure Surv Ltd as ben­e­fi­cia­ries from HDC con­tracts.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Guardian Me­dia un­cov­ered those same com­pa­nies—a web of PNM con­nec­tions, work as­so­ci­a­tions and shared reg­is­tered busi­ness ad­dress­es—as part of a net­work of com­pa­nies with busi­ness and per­son­al as­so­ci­a­tions to Cum­mings.

Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny reg­istry doc­u­ments, the list­ed di­rec­tors of Rivulet In­vest­ment Group Lim­it­ed are Juli­et and Abi­o­la Cum­mings, the wife and daugh­ter of the for­mer min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice.

Sure Surv’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor is a per­son named Ruth Cum­mings.

Pi­cal Ser­vices and Rivulet In­vest­ments were award­ed $15.6 mil­lion in HDC con­tracts 12 days ahead of the April 28, 2025, Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

“In to­tal, that for­mer MP and com­pa­nies as­so­ci­at­ed with him have been billing HDC two and a half mil­lion dol­lars a month for the last ten years. That is $300 mil­lion be­ing paid over the ten years to one man,” Khan told re­porters.

Khan said the for­mer MP al­so re­ceived lu­cra­tive garbage col­lec­tion con­tracts from HDC.

Last month, dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian at the HDC’s head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain, Khan said that the cor­po­ra­tion had been pay­ing Kly­don “over $200,000 a month to cut grass” at a piece of land at Roys­to­nia in Cou­va.

Re­ac­tions

HDC’s chair­man, Feeroz Khan, did not re­spond to calls to clar­i­fy why he chose not to iden­ti­fy Cum­mings at his press con­fer­ence but in­stead fo­cused on cost.

Ques­tions were sent to Khan, who in­formed this re­porter on Thurs­day that he was out of the coun­try.

When asked about con­tracts for­mer HDC chair­man Noel Gar­cia said: “As far as I am aware, there is leg­is­la­tion that gov­erns the pro­cure­ment process, and the man­age­ment of HDC would have ad­hered to the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion,” Gar­cia said.

The OPR on­ly be­came ef­fec­tive in 2023.

Cum­mings failed to re­spond to two What­sApp mes­sages sent to his phone on Thurs­day and Fri­day.

He al­so did not an­swer his phone on Fri­day.

In the past, Cum­mings has said that he has been a busi­ness­man for the past 30 years and had no con­flict with com­pa­nies linked to him re­ceiv­ing mil­lions in State work, while be­ing an MP, a salaried gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, un­der the Dr Kei­th-Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.