Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is con­tin­ues to dis­miss Gov­ern­ment claims that the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion al­lowed Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) com­mu­ni­ties to de­te­ri­o­rate, in­sist­ing rou­tine main­te­nance was car­ried out while she held of­fice.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is ac­cused the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of ne­glect­ing the hous­ing sec­tor.

She al­so re­ject­ed re­cent com­ments by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der, who blamed the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion for de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions in Mal­oney.

“That is rub­bish,” she said, ar­gu­ing that main­tain­ing HDC de­vel­op­ments was one of the cor­po­ra­tion’s core re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as land­lord.

She said res­i­dents were able to lodge main­te­nance com­plaints through a com­put­erised sys­tem and re­pairs were typ­i­cal­ly ad­dressed with­in days.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ques­tioned what she de­scribed as a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the Min­istry of Hous­ing, say­ing three min­is­ters had been en­trust­ed with over­see­ing one of Gov­ern­ment’s most im­por­tant port­fo­lios but had failed to pro­vide an­swers on the sec­tor.

She claimed sev­er­al hous­ing de­vel­op­ments that were un­der con­struc­tion when the PNM left of­fice in April 2025 had since stalled, in­clud­ing projects in Mal­abar, Buen In­ten­to, Corinth, Carlsen Field, Orop­une Gar­dens, Tarou­ba, Pleas­antville, Wood­star, Ed­in­burgh 500 and Moru­ga.

She sin­gled out the Cit­rus Close de­vel­op­ment in East Port-of-Spain, a project she said would have pro­vid­ed hous­ing for more than 100 peo­ple, al­leg­ing con­struc­tion had come to a stand­still.

She fur­ther al­leged that work on a new HDC of­fice in Mal­oney, re­fur­bish­ment of the Mal­oney apart­ments and the IDB-fund­ed re­de­vel­op­ment of the Mal­oney Mall had all stopped.

The for­mer min­is­ter al­so ques­tioned HDC in­sur­ance bro­ker­age con­tracts worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6.12 mil­lion award­ed to Com­pre­hen­sive In­sur­ance Bro­kers Ltd, not­ing that the firm’s for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor is Ch­agua­nas West MP and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Dr Neil Go­sine.

She called on the Gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy whether any con­flict of in­ter­est ex­ist­ed and whether any­one as­so­ci­at­ed with the com­pa­ny played a role in se­cur­ing the con­tracts.

The for­mer min­is­ter al­so pressed the Gov­ern­ment for an up­date on the re­scind­ed $3.4 bil­lion HDC hous­ing con­tract, say­ing no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion had been pro­vid­ed de­spite as­sur­ances that de­tails would be forth­com­ing with­in weeks.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of in­tro­duc­ing what she de­scribed as an “in­her­i­tance tax” on HDC homes, al­leg­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries were now be­ing re­quired to pay be­tween ten and 15 per cent of a prop­er­ty’s val­ue to trans­fer own­er­ship af­ter the death of a par­ent, de­spite pre­vi­ous as­sur­ances that no such mea­sure ex­ist­ed.

She al­so ques­tioned fees be­ing charged to home­own­ers seek­ing to sell their HDC prop­er­ties be­fore the end of the re­quired hold­ing pe­ri­od.