The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and Hous­ing Min­istry are be­ing asked to say why they can­celled the San­ta Rosa Hous­ing Project and the pro­cure­ment process used, as well as, the in­de­pen­dent eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee that se­lect­ed Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny (T&T) Ltd for the con­tract.

That was the call made by UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. He called for an­swers yes­ter­day as the Op­po­si­tion host­ed a me­dia brief­ing at its head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas.

“It can­not stop here. HDC and Hous­ing Min­istry must ac­count. I want to tell the ‘WPC’ (Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is) she must leg­go ‘search war­rant’ and go and look for awards at HDC to see what they were do­ing and how they ar­rived at that mat­ter,” he said.

Mooni­lal re­cent­ly queried the is­sue of the award of the con­tract to Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny (T&T) Ltd, af­ter lo­cal con­trac­tors protest­ed the mat­ter.

Eleven com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted bids for the project which were re­port­ed­ly less than the bid by Chi­na Har­bour which was $475.8 mil­lion. HDC stat­ed to bid­ders in Ju­ly it would have award­ed the con­tract to Chi­na Har­bour. How­ev­er, the HDC last week an­nounced it had can­celled the project and the pro­cure­ment process af­ter two com­pa­nies chal­lenged the award via the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor.

Mooni­lal asked, “Why did you scrap the project if you is­sued three press re­leas­es to say every­thing was above board. Why didn’t you stand your ground? This mat­ter can­not end, the HDC must ex­plain why they can­celled the project with Chi­na Har­bour hours af­ter Wood­green Con­struc­tion and NH In­ter­na­tion­al filed chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings with the OPR. What do you have to hide?”

Mooni­lal said there is an in­de­pen­dent eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee com­pris­ing fi­nan­cial, tech­ni­cal and pro­cure­ment ex­perts and these three peo­ple de­cid­ed on Chi­na Har­bour.

“We want to know who are the mem­bers of this com­mit­tee as Chi­na Habour, as hous­ing ex­perts told us, couldn’t have sub­mit­ted a re­al­is­tic bid giv­en the Town and Coun­try guide­lines and the Re­quest For Pro­pos­als.

“They said Chi­na Har­bour couldn’t have been build­ing that amount of units at that cost con­sis­tent with the RFP and Town and Coun­try guide­lines...it would have been the equiv­a­lent of high rise build­ings, which isn’t in the RFP. So how and why was Chi­na Har­bor se­lect­ed? Is a friend of the Prime Min­is­ter in­volved? This en­tire Gov­ern­ment is run by Row­ley and friends,” he claimed.

Mooni­lal said when it was de­cid­ed that Chi­na Har­bour couldn’t do the job why was the sec­ond bid­der not cho­sen and if the mat­ter would be re­tendered. He ques­tioned if Chi­na Har­bour could now “rein­car­nate” in­to an­oth­er en­ti­ty to seek the same con­tract.

Mooni­lal al­so de­mand­ed an­swers on the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers which he said was start­ed un­der for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Claim­ing the project was “blight”, Mooni­lal claimed it be­gan at $57 mil­lion and the cost to­day is about $180 mil­lion. He said the PP Gov­ern­ment halt­ed it as it vi­o­lat­ed util­i­ty and oth­er reg­u­la­tions.

Mooni­lal al­leged, “To­day there’s a mad rush to com­plete those Tow­ers is­su­ing $3 mil­lion con­tracts to friends and fam­i­ly of HDC of­fi­cials with­out pro­cure­ment process. “I ask HDC, give us a list of the names of all con­trac­tors at that site and the scope of their work, when that hous­ing es­tate will be com­plet­ed and what cost. And what was the pro­cure­ment process used to give out con­tracts like nuts,” he charged.