KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing for the res­ig­na­tion of Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee and Min­is­ters in the Hous­ing Min­istry, Phillip Alexan­der and Anil Roberts. 

This de­mand fol­lows al­le­ga­tions of a to­tal break­down in lead­er­ship, with the Op­po­si­tion claim­ing all three min­is­ters were un­aware of ma­jor pol­i­cy de­ci­sions be­ing made at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Op­po­si­tion said, “Who is ac­tu­al­ly run­ning hous­ing pol­i­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go? The Min­istry of Hous­ing cur­rent­ly has three Min­is­ters as­signed, col­lec­tive­ly earn­ing in ex­cess of $150,000 per month in tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. Yet the sub­stan­tive min­is­ter does not know what poli­cies are be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by the HDC, and his ju­nior min­is­ters re­main silent where the work of the min­istry is con­cerned, but mirac­u­lous­ly find their voic­es when­ev­er vile con­tent is re­quired for so­cial me­dia to vi­cious­ly at­tack any­one who holds the UNC Gov­ern­ment to ac­count. The coun­try is en­ti­tled to ask whether the min­istry is be­ing run by elect­ed of­fi­cials or by po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed ap­pointees op­er­at­ing be­yond min­is­te­r­i­al con­trol.”

How­ev­er, Alexan­der rub­bished calls for his res­ig­na­tion.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia, he said, “Stu­pid talk. There is not a sin­gle per­son in the PNM with the moral au­thor­i­ty to call on any­one to do any­thing.”

The Op­po­si­tion al­so con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for im­ple­ment­ing a “dis­guised in­her­i­tance tax through its new five and ten per cent fee for trans­fer­ring and sell­ing prop­er­ties.” 

Ac­cord­ing to the PNM, this pol­i­cy is a pun­ish­ment to griev­ing work­ing-class fam­i­lies, as peo­ple will now be re­quired to pay thou­sands of dol­lars in­stead of the $700 flat fee.

The Op­po­si­tion said these new mea­sures are a be­tray­al of the UNC’s cam­paign promis­es and are on­ly be­ing done be­cause the Gov­ern­ment is des­per­ate­ly search­ing for new rev­enue streams.

Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, a for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter, al­so ex­pressed con­cern.

“I am ap­palled by this out­right as­sault on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who can least af­ford it. It is dis­grace­ful and dis­taste­ful. The sole man­date of the HDC is the pro­vi­sion of af­ford­able hous­ing. That man­date is clear­ly set out in the HDC Act and should be the start­ing point for every pol­i­cy, strat­e­gy, and de­ci­sion the agency makes… It is, there­fore, deeply trou­bling that cur­rent deeds con­tain no such ex­ces­sive and puni­tive claus­es. Will these mea­sures ap­ply on­ly go­ing for­ward, or will ex­ist­ing home­own­ers al­so be caught? More im­por­tant­ly, is the HDC de­lib­er­ate­ly at­tempt­ing to re­place its work­ing-class ben­e­fi­cia­ries with a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent clien­tele?” Robin­son-Reg­is asked.

Ef­forts to con­tact Lee were fu­tile yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der clar­i­fied that he was aware of this pol­i­cy.

Alexan­der said, “I don’t know that he was out of the loop. Every­thing that be­comes a pol­i­cy is dis­cussed be­tween the board and the min­is­ters. The tim­ing may have caught him off guard… I was aware that it was dis­cussed. I wasn’t aware that a time was set for a rule out. But I didn’t know that we had to be con­sult­ed as to that time. That is at the lev­el of chair­man Khan and min­is­ter Lee. My job is, this is where our pol­i­cy is at now. We make sure this is what hap­pens now.”

De­fend­ing HDC’s de­ci­sion, he added that un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, HDC was left in se­ri­ous debt.

The HDC has post­ed loss­es of over $700 mil­lion for the last fis­cal year in Sep­tem­ber 2025.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves there is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sue with­in the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion that con­tin­ues to lead to in­stances where the Prime Min­is­ter says one thing but her min­is­ters aren’t in the loop.

He said this could lead to chaos with­in the Gov­ern­ment.

Mo­hammed said, “Even if a board has the abil­i­ty and the ca­pac­i­ty and the au­thor­i­ty to make a de­ci­sion, I think it is im­por­tant for the de­ci­sion that was made by the board to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the min­is­ters or to the line min­is­ter who is the head, and then to the oth­er min­is­ters ... Can they please get it right, please?”

He al­so called for the per­son who leaked the HDC doc­u­ment to be fired.