Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein has de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the Land­mark­TT/Al­lam­by hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, re­ject­ing Op­po­si­tion claims over land trans­fers.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Ho­sein de­nied the de­vel­op­er got lands at a “pep­per­corn rate,” adding he is await­ing find­ings from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR).

He not­ed the Cab­i­net’s No­vem­ber 2025 de­ci­sion ap­prov­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a State land in­vest­ment and De­vel­op­ment Pub­lic-Pri­vate-Part­ner­ship (PPP) be­tween Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate en­ti­ties for the de­liv­ery of ex­pe­dit­ed res­i­den­tial ac­com­mo­da­tion.

In Jan­u­ary of 2026, Cab­i­net fur­ther agreed that a new State en­ter­prise - Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd – would be in­cor­po­rat­ed and giv­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the PPP be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the de­vel­op­ers.He said un­der the PPP, the State will make lands avail­able to pri­vate-sec­tor in­vestors and de­vel­op­ers, who shall, in turn, con­struct ful­ly planned hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties tar­get­ed at mid-to-up­per in­come earn­ers. These hous­ing units will be sit­u­at­ed in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, with mod­ern de­sign and ameni­ties to cater for the work­ing class, he added.

Ho­sein said sev­er­al parcels of land were iden­ti­fied to be trans­ferred to Land­mark­TT.

He said, “It’s ab­solute­ly un­true that lands were trans­ferred to the de­vel­op­er at ‘pep­per­corn rate.’ The cur­rent mod­el is that Land­mark­TT, be­ing the hold­ing com­pa­ny of lands, will make the lands avail­able to the de­vel­op­er but not trans­fer ti­tle of the lands to the de­vel­op­er. That’s un­like the PNM PPP project, where the PNM trans­ferred prime State lands to a par­tic­u­lar con­trac­tor at ‘pep­per­corn rate.’”

He cit­ed NH In­ter­na­tion­al, say­ing the State is now re­quired to pay the con­trac­tor $400 mil­lion for the Health Min­istry’s build­ing.

“Un­der our PPP mod­el, no state lands were trans­ferred to any de­vel­op­er. The de­vel­op­er has to get their own fi­nanc­ing. Fol­low­ing the De­sign-Build-Fi­nance Mod­el and agreed pay­ment sched­ule, the con­trac­tor is re­spon­si­ble for fund­ing the en­tire de­vel­op­ment cost. No mon­ey will be col­lect­ed by the de­vel­op­er un­til the units are ac­tu­al­ly sold. Up­on sale of the units, Land­mark­TT will keep its share of the pro­ceeds for the land and the de­vel­op­er will then be paid for con­struc­tion of the hous­ing units.”

Ho­sein said the de­vel­op­er on­ly re­ceives fi­nal pay­ment on the de­vel­op­ment up­on sale of the units on the open mar­ket.

“Land­mark­TT, un­like oth­er state en­ter­pris­es, was cre­at­ed to gen­er­ate rev­enue for the State, so it can fund oth­er projects to as­sist low-in­come earn­ers.

“What is the com­plaint? I’m ad­vised that on the Al­lam­by site, a se­lec­tive com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment method was utilised for the se­lec­tion of the de­vel­op­er, all of whom were al­ready reg­is­tered on the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment (OPR) De­pos­i­to­ry as con­trac­tors in that line of busi­ness, and the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­er was Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd. This was not a sin­gle-source se­lec­tion!”

Ho­sein said the OPR re­quest­ed that Land­mark­TT pro­vide a re­sponse with­in sev­en work­ing days of their let­ter, and Land­mark­TT re­spond­ed with­in the time­frame.

He said equal at­ten­tion and rigour should al­so be giv­en to projects and con­tracts un­der the past Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion. He al­leged that “a sis­ter, one Gads­by who served as re­for­esta­tion as­sis­tant in the Re­for­esta­tion Pro­gramme,” had to be placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to with­hold­ing gov­ern­ment records.

Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment had learned that the com­plaint to the OPR on the Land­mark­TT is­sue was ini­ti­at­ed by a for­mer PNM hous­ing min­is­ter, Ran­dall Mitchell, rep­re­sent­ing ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley.”He high­light­ed projects and con­tracts award­ed un­der the PNM - the bil­lion dol­lar ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals by NIPDEC, the $100m Sec­ondary Roads Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny and al­leged Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny “rack­et with se­ri­ous prob­lems of bid-rig­ging, cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion.”

He added, “One won­ders if a known PNM con­trac­tor was award­ed any con­tract, who would have lined their pock­ets and con­tributed to the con­struc­tion of Bal­isi­er House.... Af­ter the PNM lost elec­tion, work stopped on Bal­isi­er House. Why? “

In re­sponse to Ho­sein’s claims, Op­po­si­tion whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia, “It’s an­oth­er grand dis­trac­tion from the facts on Land­mark­TT. If there was wrong­do­ing, Ho­sein should take it to TTPS but he failed to ac­count on the main is­sue - Land­mark­TT.”