Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has de­scribed the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) as a “big slush fund” un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, nam­ing sev­er­al com­pa­nies he said re­ceived mil­lions of dol­lars in con­tracts, in­clud­ing one linked to PNM as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary and San Fer­nan­do Deputy May­or Pa­tri­cia Alex­is.

Lee made the claims in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Wednes­day dur­ing de­bate on the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026. The bill was passed de­spite op­po­si­tion from PNM MPs and is sched­uled for de­bate in the Sen­ate to­day.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Lee dis­missed the Op­po­si­tion’s crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment’s gov­er­nance record.

“They talked about good gov­er­nance un­der them. Well, I want to show you and read out some of their ‘good gov­er­nance’,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to HDC records, Lee list­ed five com­pa­nies that he said re­ceived sole-se­lect ten­der con­tracts: Clydon En­ter­pris­es Ltd, Pi­cal Ser­vices Ltd, Rivulet In­vest­ment Group, Costar Trans­port and Con­struc­tion, and Sha­iat­su Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors Ltd.

“There is one, Sha­iat­su Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors. My good friend from San Fer­nan­do East would love that com­pa­ny, Sha­iat­su,” Lee said.

He then al­leged that Pa­tri­cia Alex­is was as­so­ci­at­ed with the com­pa­ny.

“When I did the re­search, do you know who is Sha­iat­su Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors? One Pa­tri­cia Alex­is from San Fer­nan­do. I don’t know if that’s the same la­dy he was fight­ing with, they were hav­ing some po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ments,” Lee added.

Ac­cord­ing to Lee, con­tracts award­ed on a sole-se­lect ba­sis in­clud­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.5 mil­lion to Clydon En­ter­pris­es in a sin­gle year, more than $9 mil­lion to Pi­cal Ser­vices, over $15 mil­lion to Rivulet In­vest­ment Group, $4 mil­lion to Costar Trans­port and Con­struc­tion, and more than $2.5 mil­lion to Sha­iat­su Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors.

“You know the kind of work Sha­iat­su was do­ing in the con­stituen­cy of San Fer­nan­do East, in Cyprus Hills and HDC com­plex­es? Cut­ting grass, main­te­nance. Tar­o­dale. Pa­tri­cia Alex­is,” Lee said.

Alex­is did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment from the T&T Guardian.

Lee al­so ques­tioned con­tracts award­ed to T&T Land­scap­ing Com­pa­ny, which he said re­ceived more than $4.8 mil­lion in HDC main­te­nance con­tracts in a sin­gle year.

“I didn’t think they would have got­ten in­to the small and medi­um type of work,” Lee said.

He fur­ther al­leged that the com­pa­ny was con­nect­ed to the Gabriel fam­i­ly.

“Some might say they are part of the one per cent. I don’t know. But I know this fam­i­ly is very well off. I wouldn’t want to think they’d go down in South, in Pleas­antville, Oa­sis in Ch­agua­nas, Hu­bert Town and Lake­view Hous­ing in Point Fortin col­lect­ing garbage. $4.8 mil­lion, sole se­lect.”

Ques­tion­ing the award of the con­tracts, Lee asked: “You mean there was no­body else to do main­te­nance work in San Fer­nan­do that HDC had to bring some­body from Port-of-Spain to do this kind of work in San Fer­nan­do?”

He added: “Then the PNM sits here in Par­lia­ment play­ing the paragon of virtue, say­ing we have grub­by hands.”

“Well, we chop off theirs,” in­ter­ject­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein.

Lee fur­ther cit­ed a con­tract for the de­sign and con­struc­tion of 191 apart­ments off the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, as well as a hous­ing project in­volv­ing 136 units with a to­tal con­tract val­ue of $199 mil­lion.

He said the con­tract was award­ed to Wood­green Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd, de­spite Rain­bow Con­struc­tion sub­mit­ting what he claimed was the low­est bid.

“They were not the low­est bid­der on this ten­der. The low­est was Rain­bow Con­struc­tion, which came in at a cost of $839,000 per unit. Wood­green came in at $1 mil­lion per unit. Wood­green won the con­tract,” Lee said, al­leg­ing that “han­ky-panky” oc­curred in the ten­der­ing process.

Lee said Rain­bow Con­struc­tion sub­se­quent­ly filed a com­plaint with the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) in 2023.

“Up to to­day, the OPR can­not re­spond to that chal­lenge, so when we talk about the OPR, there are is­sues there,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so not­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 228,000 peo­ple re­main on the wait­ing list for hous­ing and said his con­stituen­cy of­fice re­ceives week­ly re­quests for hous­ing as­sis­tance, in­clud­ing re­fer­rals from PNM MPs.