Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West is in­sist­ing there were no ghost rentals dur­ing her tenure.

West held the port­fo­lio along with oth­ers from 2019 un­til the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) de­feat in last month’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

West, in a me­dia re­lease, re­spond­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim of an emer­gence of what she re­ferred to as “ghost rentals”, where there ap­peared to be lit­tle to no ev­i­dence of ac­tu­al gov­ern­ment oc­cu­pa­tion or us­age at some of the rent­ed prop­er­ties.

The Prime Min­is­ter made the claim dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

“The rent paid by gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies does not match the fig­ure on a mas­ter list of prop­er­ties rent­ed by gov­ern­ment, which is pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min. Some of the prop­er­ties for which rents are be­ing paid are not even on the mas­ter list.

“I don’t know if you want to call them ghost rentals, but the gov­ern­ment is pay­ing al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars a year in rentals,” the PM said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that there were vari­ances in the rent paid ver­sus rent on the mas­ter list, in­clud­ing $21.8 mil­lion for the Ju­di­cia­ry, $24.8 mil­lion for the Min­istry of Fi­nance, and $47.9 mil­lion for the Min­istry of Health, for ex­am­ple.

In re­sponse, West said, “To treat with the most egre­gious claim first, I did not pre­side over a sys­tem of ghost rentals.

“Is there a dif­fer­ence be­tween the to­tal rental cost re­flect­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­counts as pre­pared by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and that re­flect­ed on the Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min? Yes, there is.”

West ex­plained that this vari­ance hap­pened when some rent­ed prop­er­ties did not form part of the list of prop­er­ties un­der the Prop­er­ty and Re­al Es­tate Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the min­istry.

“As a gen­er­al rule, many gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties out­side of cen­tral gov­ern­ment han­dle their own rentals, the de­tails of which are not known to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MPA) or in­clud­ed on MPA’s records. This is true of statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties such as the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, oth­er gov­ern­ment bod­ies and state-owned com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, where any of those en­ti­ties re­ceive fi­nan­cial sup­port from GoRTT and pro­vide a break­down of ex­pens­es to jus­ti­fy their re­quest for that sup­port, their prop­er­ty rental costs would be iden­ti­fied as a line item and as such be in­clud­ed in MoF’s to­tal rental fig­ure. That is what ex­plains the dis­crep­an­cy be­tween the MoF fig­ures and that of the MPA.”

West said un­der her lead­er­ship, rentals were ne­go­ti­at­ed down to $10.00 per square foot in Port-of-Spain and re­ject­ed the PM’s claim that it was $23 per square foot. This, she said, and oth­er fac­tors re­sult­ed in month­ly rental costs from $23M to $17M, with ad­di­tion­al pro­pos­als to re­duce costs which in­clud­ed cross-sec­tor mul­ti-pur­pose us­age of state build­ings.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment must find ways of cost-cut­ting and that they planned to rene­go­ti­ate down­wards the prices of rentals with land­lords and make moves to ac­quire their own prop­er­ties, re­it­er­at­ing the need to de­cen­tralise.

West said un­der for­mer prime min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young, SC, the idea of de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion was not pro­mot­ed, as they be­lieved cer­tain fun­da­men­tal things were ex­pect­ed of a cap­i­tal city, one be­ing that it is the cen­tre of gov­ern­ment ser­vices.