Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man Feeroz Khan says he in­tend­ed no dis­re­spect to the 26 em­ploy­ees whose con­tracts were not re­newed last week, de­spite his de­ci­sion be­ing framed by his de­scrip­tion of the Cor­po­ra­tion as a “sick cow rid­dled with ticks.”

Khan sought to clar­i­fy that he was not re­fer­ring to the work­ers at HDC as “ticks.”

But his anal­o­gy drew sharp crit­i­cism from Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les who claimed that this is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ “de­mon­i­sa­tion and at­tack against poor peo­ple.”

The work­ers were em­ployed with the HDC’s sub­sidiary, Cor­po­ra­tion–Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (CCL).

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while their con­tracts had tech­ni­cal­ly ex­pired, many were “in­for­mal­ly” led to be­lieve they would be re­newed. Some staff whose con­tracts lapsed as ear­ly as Ju­ly 2025 re­port­ed­ly kept work­ing and re­ceiv­ing full pay, with no writ­ten no­tice that their em­ploy­ment would not con­tin­ue.

How­ev­er, on Tues­day Chair­man Khan said the di­vi­sion was over­staffed and un­der­per­form­ing, and that tough de­ci­sions were nec­es­sary be­cause the HDC was los­ing mon­ey.

He then used an anal­o­gy where he com­pared the HDC to a sick cow that was rid­dled with ticks and the board could not sus­tain con­tin­u­ous “blood suck­ing.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the af­fect­ed work­ers and em­ploy­ees still at CCL took great of­fence at that com­par­i­son.

But Khan said he did not mean that the work­ers were “ticks.”

“I do un­der­stand what is the dif­fi­cul­ty in un­der­stand­ing an anal­o­gy. We are in a dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and that doesn’t de­hu­man­ise any­body to say that. We are in a very pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion akin to that of a sick cow. You ex­pect that cow to pro­vide sus­te­nance for you as in­deed you ex­pect the HDC to pro­vide sus­te­nance for you.”

He added, “It has noth­ing to do with the work­ers but there have been peo­ple who have been tak­ing ad­van­tage of the com­pa­ny. We have talked about con­trac­tors. There was a whole sto­ry about that. Peo­ple who did not have prop­er ten­der process and had ex­ces­sive ten­ders.”

Asked point­ed­ly if he used the word “ticks” to de­scribe the 26 em­ploy­ees whose con­tracts were not re­newed, Khan said, “No, I’m say­ing that we are a sick com­pa­ny and it’s like that. When a cow is sick and it’s rid­dled with ticks, how can you be­come healthy? How can you give milk? How can you sus­tain peo­ple?”

But PNM Chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion has con­tin­u­ous­ly used deroga­to­ry re­marks to la­bel the work­ing class af­ter “us­ing them to ride to po­lit­i­cal pow­er.”

Gon­za­les said, “From “ghosts” to “crim­i­nals” they now call them “cows rid­dled with ticks.”

He al­so called out the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and Labour Min­is­ter, Leroy Bap­tiste, a for­mer PSA head for be­ing silent.

“The cur­rent head of the PSA does not know if she’s go­ing or com­ing. The MP for La Brea al­so a ju­nior min­is­ter for­mer union leader, calls work­ers fir­ing as “col­lat­er­al dam­age.” All of these peo­ple now sit silent­ly while this Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to bru­tal­ize and de­monise work­ers.”

He said the gov­ern­ment was set­ting the stage for so­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty.

On Tues­day, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas ex­pressed shock over the move and the union said it would be seek­ing re­in­state­ment for the 26 work­ers. Khan did not in­di­cate if it would be suc­cess­ful in that en­deav­our. —Akash Sama­roo