Due to non-pay­ment by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion for al­most a year, a small con­trac­tor has been forced to re­duce his staff and op­er­a­tions.

Left with no oth­er choice, the con­trac­tor in­tends to sue HDC if out­stand­ing pay­ments amount­ing to over $200,000 are not set­tled by next month.

How­ev­er, the HDC has as­sured pay­ments will start next week.

Un­der pres­sure from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and run­ning low on his sav­ings, the con­trac­tor told re­porters yes­ter­day that he does not know how much longer he can keep his busi­ness afloat.

Re­quest­ing anonymi­ty, the con­trac­tor, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Dirt “B” Jan­i­to­r­i­al & Main­te­nance Gen­er­al Ser­vices Ltd, com­plained, “It’s af­fect­ing my busi­ness, part of it close down and I had to send home some staff.”

Four of his em­ploy­ees are now on the bread­line and he has since re­lo­cat­ed his busi­ness to a small­er of­fice.

In 2016, the con­trac­tor was award­ed a con­tract to pro­vide waste dis­pos­al ser­vices at HDC’s Ridge­wood Gar­dens, Phase Two de­vel­op­ment in Gol­con­da. How­ev­er, he claimed HDC stopped pay­ing him last No­vem­ber.

De­spite send­ing cor­re­spon­dence per­son­al­ly and through his at­tor­ney, he said HDC has not made any pay­ments. He, how­ev­er, has not stopped work­ing.

“I nev­er stopped the ser­vice. They have no com­plaints about that, every­thing I am re­quired to do as per con­tract and agree­ment I am do­ing that. But the con­tract states that they are sup­posed to pay with­in or no more than 30 days and if you check, you will see that it is since last year Oc­to­ber, that’s a year now, no pay­ments and the thing about it is they do not com­mu­ni­cate with you.”

The con­trac­tor said his at­tor­ney has been li­ais­ing with HDC’s le­gal de­part­ment, with lawyers there in­di­cat­ing the mat­ter will be looked in­to. But that was since Ju­ly and there has been no feed­back to date.

The con­trac­tor com­plained that he has had to dip in­to his sav­ings to keep his busi­ness afloat.

“Right now, the bank, it hit­ting me hard with cred­it card pay­ments and all that stuff. I had to close down the of­fice at Cof­fee Street, I was rent­ing, COVID did not make it any eas­i­er?”

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the HDC promised that pay­ments to con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers will start in the up­com­ing week.

Re­spond­ing via What­sApp Mes­sen­ger, the HDC stat­ed, “The Trinidad and To­ba­go Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) re­grets the in­con­ve­nience caused to con­trac­tors. The ex­pect­ed in­jec­tion of $500 mil­lion via the Gov­ern­ment’s guar­an­teed loan will en­sure that the debt to con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers will be sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced. We will be­gin pay­ments to con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers in tranch­es in the up­com­ing week. The Cor­po­ra­tion is ask­ing our ser­vice providers for their con­tin­ued pa­tience as we ho­n­our our com­mit­ments.”