Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has fired con­trac­tor Ricky Raghu­nanan from the con­tro­ver­sial Tre­strail De­vel­op­ment.

Raghu­nanan was al­lowed by the HDC to start and al­most com­plete the project with­out post­ing a per­for­mance bond, which was a cri­te­ria for the de­sign-build-fi­nance con­tract. Tre­strail was the first project of its kind done by Raghu­nanan for the HDC.

On March 22, the HDC wrote to Raghu­nanan, in­di­cat­ing their in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate the con­tract af­ter a 14-day no­tice pe­ri­od.

That pe­ri­od end­ed yes­ter­day, April 6.

In ad­di­tion, Raghu­nanan has been ex­pelled from the site.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the de­ci­sion was tak­en at the last HDC Board meet­ing fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive meet­ings with Raghu­nanan to ad­dress the short­com­ings in the project and his in­abil­i­ty to meet the HDC’s re­quire­ment to post the per­for­mance bond.

The con­tract, val­ued at $72,043,871.90 (VAT ex­clu­sive) for the con­struc­tion of 103 homes, was award­ed to Raghu­nanan on Jan­u­ary 29, 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to the con­tract, the hous­ing units should have been com­plet­ed with­in 240 days from the day of com­mence­ment, which was No­vem­ber 20, 2020.

On Jan­u­ary 18, af­ter the HDC is­sued their first no­tice of ter­mi­na­tion, Raghu­nanan wrote to the cor­po­ra­tion, in­di­cat­ing that he was not in agree­ment with the HDC’s po­si­tion in re­la­tion to the ter­mi­na­tion of the con­tract and in­di­cat­ing that he would meet the per­for­mance bond re­quire­ment sub­ject to cer­tain con­di­tions and his sat­is­fac­tion of cer­tain con­di­tions.

The HDC en­gaged CEP Lim­it­ed, which had done a struc­tur­al au­dit of Tre­strail, to deal with Raghu­nanan.

In the HDC’s view, 1,151 days have passed since the con­tract was is­sued, and at­tempts to get Raghu­nanan to com­ply with cor­rec­tive ac­tion in the hous­ing units have been fu­tile, adding fur­ther de­lays to adding the hous­es to the HDC sys­tem. In ad­di­tion, the HDC stat­ed that it failed, de­spite re­peat­ed let­ters to the com­pa­ny, to get Raghu­nanan to post the per­for­mance bond.

An in­formed source told the Sun­day Guardian, that the HDC sought ad­vice from se­nior coun­sel be­fore it took the de­ci­sion and that it was in the com­pa­ny’s best in­ter­est to ter­mi­nate.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that the HDC, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CEP Lim­it­ed, would now take over the project and would prob­a­bly have to re-ten­der for some parts of it.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that all ad­di­tion­al work at Tre­strail will be de­duct­ed from the con­tract price.

Fur­ther­more, no sums will be paid to Raghu­nanan un­til the project is com­plet­ed.

The project, which be­gan at $72 mil­lion VAT ex­clu­sive, is now es­ti­mat­ed to be $112 mil­lion.

Con­trac­tor says he is un­aware of be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Raghu­nanan said he was not aware of be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed from the project.Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal had called for a probe in­to the stalled project, al­leg­ing that mil­lions of state funds could be wast­ed. He al­so ac­cused the HDC of fail­ing to ex­er­cise its “fidu­cia­ry du­ty” con­cern­ing the con­di­tion of about 100 units at the hous­ing project.

For her part, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said the con­trac­tor had to fund all re­me­di­al works.

In a press state­ment on the mat­ter, the HDC said its board of man­age­ment had con­cerns about cer­tain struc­tur­al is­sues on the project and, as a re­sult, com­mis­sioned CEP Lim­it­ed to con­duct a study on the struc­tur­al is­sues af­fect­ing the project.

The study iden­ti­fied sev­er­al de­fects, in­clud­ing with the foun­da­tion, the con­crete first-floor slab, and the in­abil­i­ty to sup­port loads.

A Ge­ot­ech­ni­cal In­ves­tiga­tive Re­port by EISL Lim­it­ed in 2022 found that ‘the fail­ures ob­served on-site have been known to be as­so­ci­at­ed with non-con­for­mance to ba­sic con­struc­tion meth­ods and qual­i­ty con­trol re­quire­ments as it re­lates to build­ing foun­da­tions.’

De­spite the con­cerns raised by the HDC about the qual­i­ty of work done on the project, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Ricky Raghu­nanan Lim­it­ed was award­ed at least four more state con­tracts by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port worth more than $7.4 mil­lion.