Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion has suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed it­self against 11 com­plaints brought against it by NH In­ter­na­tion­al be­fore the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, clear­ing the way for a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar hous­ing pro­gramme to pro­ceed.

NH In­ter­na­tion­al had chal­lenged its ex­clu­sion from a pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise for 3,700 hous­ing units, cov­er­ing build­ing and in­fra­struc­ture works val­ued at more than $3.48 bil­lion.

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s tri­bunal de­liv­ered its rul­ings yes­ter­day, dis­miss­ing each of the 11 ap­pli­ca­tions.

The tri­bunal found that the com­plaints failed to meet the re­quire­ments of Sec­tion 50(2)(a) of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, as amend­ed, and Reg­u­la­tion 4(b) of the Chal­lenge Pro­ceed­ings Reg­u­la­tions 2021.

A pan­el chaired by Rev­erend Joy Ab­dul-Mo­han, with mem­bers Su­san Tor­ry and Joy Joseph-Lara, dis­missed all claims in iden­ti­cal rul­ings.

In a me­dia re­lease, the HDC said it was “pleased with the out­come of this mat­ter” and main­tained that “at all pe­ri­ods of time, it has act­ed in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est.”

The cor­po­ra­tion point­ed to what it de­scribed as a “crit­i­cal short­age of af­ford­able homes on the mar­ket” and said it re­mains com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing “qual­i­ty homes at a cost that the av­er­age cit­i­zen can af­ford.”

It added that “there will al­ways be dis­ap­point­ed con­trac­tors” and said it un­der­stands and em­pathis­es with “their frus­tra­tion and angst,” but will con­tin­ue its man­date to ad­dress the hous­ing sit­u­a­tion.

The HDC al­so said it is “com­mit­ted to the rule of law” and “ful­ly re­spects the au­thor­i­ty and ju­ris­dic­tion of the OPR,” adding that it “wel­comes and re­spects any guid­ance in the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der al­so re­spond­ed in a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia, say­ing, “Every­thing is go­ing to be trans­par­ent, every­thing is go­ing to be above board.”

At­tor­ney for the State, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, al­so wel­comed the de­ci­sion, say­ing, “We look for­ward to any oth­er is­sues be­ing sim­i­lar­ly am­i­ca­bly re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame so that HDC and the gov­ern­ment can get on with the busi­ness of the peo­ple to ad­dress the hous­ing short­age cri­sis that ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

This case was, how­ev­er, sep­a­rate from a re­cent probe which the OPR launched in­to the award of the $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts to 11 con­trac­tors by the HDC. The projects have been halt­ed un­til the OPR makes its de­ter­mi­na­tion on whether the process was done trans­par­ent­ly and legal­ly.