CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee says any move to reg­u­larise peo­ple squat­ting at Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) units must first go be­fore the Cab­i­net, fol­low­ing com­ments by HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day about the plan, which has gen­er­at­ed wide­spread ques­tions and con­dem­na­tion on so­cial me­dia, Lee said he has not spo­ken to Khan since his state­ments, which were pub­lished in the Sun­day Guardian, but stressed that no pol­i­cy de­ci­sion had been tak­en. He said he has called a meet­ing of the HDC board for Jan­u­ary 2 to ad­dress the mat­ter.

Asked whether the chair­man’s an­nounce­ment con­tra­dict­ed Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, Lee said any ini­tia­tive, even one brought for­ward with good in­ten­tions, must fol­low the es­tab­lished process and re­ceive Cab­i­net ap­proval.

“In that pol­i­cy, what­ev­er pol­i­cy that with good in­ten­tion the chair­man want­ed to do, it has to come to Cab­i­net,” Lee said. “So, I think he might have jumped the gun with­out hav­ing some dis­cus­sions.”

Lee said the board meet­ing would al­low him to un­der­stand the rea­son­ing be­hind the pro­pos­al be­fore any fur­ther steps are tak­en.

“I have to un­der­stand what is the ra­tio­nale be­hind it,” he said, adding that un­til then, he would not com­ment be­yond what had al­ready ap­peared in the news­pa­pers.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Khan said the HDC was look­ing to reg­u­larise squat­ters who have tak­en up res­i­dence in some of its un­oc­cu­pied prop­er­ties.

He has said as it stands, there are about 1,000 prop­er­ties il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pied. Khan said that’s a min­i­mum of $500 mil­lion worth of val­ue. Khan said that with the HDC in debt, when the HDC dis­cov­ers il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion, it would now move to as­sess whether oc­cu­pants can be reg­u­larised.

“Our first port of call when we dis­cov­er il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion is to try and reg­u­larise per­sons who are in il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion, and if they can qual­i­fy for a mort­gage, we put them through that sales process. There are some peo­ple who we are treat­ing with at the mo­ment. But it re­al­ly is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber,” Khan said.

Ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia on whether reg­u­lar­is­ing il­le­gal oc­cu­piers was fair to ap­pli­cants who have spent years wait­ing for pub­lic hous­ing, Khan ac­knowl­edged the con­cern but point­ed to the prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved.

Ef­forts to con­tact Khan yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.