Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee says that 48 Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) em­ploy­ees have not had their con­tracts re­newed, as the cor­po­ra­tion moves to ad­dress what it de­scribes as fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ini­tial­ly, that num­ber was 26, who were all from HDC’s sub­sidiary, Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (CCL).

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, HDC Chair­man Feeroz Khan said the HDC would end its con­tracts with at least 50 main­te­nance providers and their em­ploy­ees by year’s end. He al­so sig­nalled the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther staff re­duc­tions at HDC af­ter a $700 mil­lion debt.

But in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, the Op­po­si­tion, re­fer­ring to a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle, asked Min­is­ter Lee how many HDC work­ers and con­trac­tors are to be ter­mi­nat­ed or have their con­tracts not re­newed.

Lee replied, “HDC has a work­force of 765 em­ploy­ees, 48 em­ploy­ees whose con­tracts end­ed were not giv­en new con­tracts. I just want to say that those in­di­vid­u­als would have got­ten 20 per cent gra­tu­ity. As far as the month­ly main­te­nance con­trac­tors, I don’t have an ex­act fig­ure, but I just want to say that con­tracts for month­ly main­te­nance were in ex­cess of $10 mil­lion.”

Lee added, “Some of those con­tracts have been re­viewed and re­newed be­cause the HDC board has an is­sue with how the main­te­nance con­tracts were struc­tured. There was no prop­er pro­cure­ment over the last few years, and there are a lot of is­sues and re­al­i­ties that need to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and au­dit­ed.”

Khan had pre­vi­ous­ly said the con­trac­tors were charg­ing ex­or­bi­tant fees, some­times six times the mar­ket val­ue, and the HDC would now look to see how its 400 dai­ly paid work­ers can fill that gap.

How­ev­er, Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle said if the HDC was look­ing to save mon­ey, it should not be so top-heavy.

“How do you jus­ti­fy hav­ing three min­is­ters do­ing ab­solute­ly noth­ing, can­not ac­count for ab­solute­ly one ini­tia­tive that they have been able to ex­e­cute with­in the last sev­en months, and com­ing to talk about there be­ing too many staff in HDC,” Mar­celle said out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Mar­celle al­so took note of when Khan ini­tial­ly de­scribed the HDC as a sick cow rid­dled with ticks. A state­ment that Khan lat­er said was just an anal­o­gy.

“I call on the Gov­ern­ment to stop their in­hu­mane ac­tions against cit­i­zens of this coun­try, to stop treat­ing the cit­i­zens of this coun­try as ticks and dogs, and to kill them vi­o­lent­ly, and to be­have in this man­ner.” Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ad­vised the HDC chair­man to take any ev­i­dence of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety to the po­lice.

She al­so con­demned the “ticks” state­ment as “ridicu­lous.”

PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said the union will do “what we have to do to pro­tect our mem­ber­ship” at HDC. “Wher­ev­er bar­gain­ing units are be­ing at­tacked, we will de­fend our mem­ber­ship. And if the in­ten­tion of the HDC is to ter­mi­nate more work­ers, the PSA will re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly.”