Ke­jan Haynes

For­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West has flat­ly de­nied claims that she presided over “ghost rentals,” call­ing the ac­cu­sa­tion the most egre­gious of sev­er­al “mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and in­nu­en­dos” made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“I once again call for our pub­lic dis­course to be ground­ed in fact, rather than mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and in­nu­en­do," she said in a state­ment.

She said dis­crep­an­cies be­tween the rental costs record­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and those on the Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem man­aged by her min­istry had a sim­ple ex­pla­na­tion: the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MPA), through the Prop­er­ty and Re­al Es­tate Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (PRESD), han­dled com­mer­cial rentals for cen­tral gov­ern­ment on­ly.

“Many gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties out­side of cen­tral gov­ern­ment han­dle their own rentals, the de­tails of which are not known to MPA or in­clud­ed on MPA’s records,” West said, cit­ing statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties like the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties. When these bod­ies re­quest fund­ing from the gov­ern­ment, their rental costs ap­pear in the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s fig­ures—not in MPA’s.

West al­so took aim at Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that the State was pay­ing an av­er­age of $23 per square foot in rent in Port of Spain. “That is cer­tain­ly not true of the prop­er­ties falling un­der the re­mit of PRESD,” she said. “One of the first things I did on as­sum­ing of­fice was to en­sure that we iden­ti­fied the most ex­pen­sive rentals and set about treat­ing with those.”

She said PRESD was specif­i­cal­ly man­dat­ed by Cab­i­net to bring Port of Spain rental rates down to $10 per square foot, a goal large­ly achieved. By the time she left of­fice, month­ly rental costs had dropped from $23 mil­lion to $17 mil­lion, with fur­ther sav­ings in progress.

These in­clud­ed ac­quir­ing the TSTT Laven­tille prop­er­ty to house po­lice of­fices and save $1 mil­lion month­ly, con­sol­i­dat­ing ser­vices in Point Fortin at the Her­itage Ad­min Cen­tre, and trans­fer­ring the Prime Min­is­ter’s To­ba­go of­fice from a pri­vate to a state-owned build­ing. Plans were al­so un­der­way for a cen­tralised gov­ern­ment records fa­cil­i­ty and shared tri­bunal cen­tre to re­duce prop­er­ty foot­prints and costs.

West ac­knowl­edged that main­te­nance re­mained a weak­ness in the pub­lic sec­tor but said rental agree­ments clear­ly de­fined re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and PRESD worked to en­sure land­lords up­held their oblig­a­tions.

She al­so pushed back on the nar­ra­tive that the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion had no vi­sion for de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion. While not re­lo­cat­ing min­istries from the cap­i­tal, she said their fo­cus was to “bring ser­vices clos­er to the peo­ple” through dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the cre­ation of full-ser­vice ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­tres across the coun­try.