Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) in­tends to de­mol­ish more than half of the 100 hous­ing units at the trou­bled Tre­strail De­vel­op­ment, lo­cat­ed off La Re­source Road, D’Abadie, due to in­fra­struc­ture is­sues that have plagued the de­vel­op­ment. The build­ings to be torn down are val­ued at mil­lions of dol­lars.

De­spite this, the con­trac­tor Ricky Raghu­nanan will be paid mil­lions for work done on the de­vel­op­ment. The project, which be­gan at $72 mil­lion VAT ex­clu­sive, is now es­ti­mat­ed to be $112 mil­lion.

At this point, the sum to be paid to Raghu­nanan is be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween him and the HDC’s lawyers since he was fired from the project in April of this year.

In a state­ment to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, the HDC could not con­firm how many units would be de­mol­ished.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that a res­o­lu­tion was passed by the HDC board and that Raghu­nanan was in­formed of their de­ci­sion giv­en that it would af­fect ne­go­ti­a­tions al­ready un­der­way.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) will not de­mol­ish all the build­ings at Tre­strail. This de­ci­sion was based on a re­port com­mis­sioned by an in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny’s test­ing of the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the units con­struct­ed.

“This con­tract, a De­sign-Build Fi­nance, re­quires pay­ment on de­liv­ery of fit-for-pur­pose units as per the agreed terms and con­tract. As a re­sult, pay­ments will be made in ac­cor­dance with costs ex­pend­ed less costs of retro­fitting de­fec­tive units,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Raghu­nanan said he was in­formed by the HDC of its de­ci­sion but said, “My lawyers are deal­ing with it.”

The HDC con­tract with Raghu­nanan had two anom­alies: He did not have a track record of con­struct­ing hous­ing de­vel­op­ments. Tre­strail was his first hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

Un­like oth­er De­sign-Build Fi­nance con­tracts in the pub­lic ser­vice, Raghu­nanan did not post a per­for­mance bond. He was al­lowed by the HDC to start and al­most com­plete the project with­out post­ing a per­for­mance bond or any part there­of.

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.

“The HDC in­tends to de­liv­er on its man­date of pro­vid­ing gov­ern­ment-sub­sidised units to those most de­serv­ing by con­struct­ing hous­es on its lands in­tend­ed for its cus­tomers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who pa­tient­ly opt­ed to await the com­ple­tion of the Tre­strail project,” it added.

As it stands, there are more than 180,000-plus ap­pli­cants through­out the coun­try await­ing homes.

Fired from Tre­strail

On March 22, the HDC wrote to Raghu­nanan in­di­cat­ing their in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate the con­tract af­ter a 14-day no­tice pe­ri­od. That pe­ri­od end­ed on April 6, af­ter which Raghu­nanan was ex­pelled from the site.

The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that the HDC’s de­ci­sion fol­lowed 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.

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

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.’

In the HDC’s view, 1,151 days had 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 al­so failed, de­spite re­peat­ed let­ters to the com­pa­ny, to get Raghu­nanan to post the per­for­mance bond.

The HDC, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CEP Lim­it­ed, has tak­en over the project.

Af­ter the units are de­mol­ished, the HDC would prob­a­bly have to re-ten­der for parts of it.

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.

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. 

Last Thurs­day, the HDC al­so in­vit­ed sev­er­al con­trac­tors to tour Tre­strail and “in­vite you, amongst oth­ers, to sub­mit a Quo­ta­tion for the Pro­vi­sion of De­mo­li­tion Ser­vices for Tre­strail Phase 1 R.”

Ac­cord­ing to the HDC, the con­trac­tor’s bid should be sub­mit­ted as an over­all lump sum price with the fol­low­ing to be con­sid­ered and quot­ed on: Pre­lim­i­nar­ies, Sub­struc­ture, Su­per­struc­ture and In­fra­struc­ture.