Tobago Housing Secretary confirms $280M for 250 new homes

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will be de­liv­er­ing 250 hous­ing units to the peo­ple by Au­gust 2027.

The units, built at a cost of $280 mil­lion, fall un­der the Rise­land and Ad­ven­ture de­vel­op­ment projects.

Sec­re­tary of Hous­ing Ricky Joe­field gave an up­date on the projects yes­ter­day at a post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing at the Ho­choy Charles Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, Calder Hall.

Joe­field said the Rise­land Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment in Carn­bee will cost $141.9 mil­lion and is be­ing fi­nanced via a de­sign-build-fi­nance mod­el.

The Ad­ven­ture Phase III De­vel­op­ment in Ply­mouth is ap­prox­i­mat­ed at $139 mil­lion, struc­tured un­der a de­liv­ery-fo­cused en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion turnkey frame­work. He said the units will be af­ford­able and range from $850,000 to $1.3 mil­lion.

The Rise­land project (130 units) has been con­tract­ed to Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­coo while the Ad­ven­ture project (120 units) is be­ing done by CSSL Ltd.

Joe­field said the con­trac­tors have promised to de­liv­er 50 units in each de­vel­op­ment by Christ­mas this year.

The projects are be­ing man­aged by the To­ba­go Ur­ban and Rur­al Hous­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, a THA-ap­point­ed board.

Joe­field said, “These projects present sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in the To­ba­go hous­ing sec­tor and forms part of the broad­er struc­tured pro­gramme to ex­pand ac­cess to home own­er­ship, which has been a prob­lem on the is­land for quite a num­ber of years. It is my per­son­al man­date to solve this is­sue for the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

He said he is com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy to en­sure every­one is giv­en a fair chance, from the con­struc­tion phase to dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Dar­rel Spring/Whim said there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,000-10,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for hous­ing at the di­vi­sion. How­ev­er, he said that list may need sani­tis­ing to en­sure it is up-to-date.

“I would need to have an idea what our tar­gets are,” he said.

Asked about con­cerns raised by the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil that lo­cal con­trac­tors were be­ing side­lined in favour of their Trinida­di­an coun­ter­parts, Joe­field said the is­sue is be­ing ad­dressed.

“I had sev­er­al meet­ings along with the Chief (Sec­re­tary) and Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion and they brought those same sce­nario to us. We are work­ing in tan­dem with them in terms of them bring­ing their com­pa­nies ... I am be­ing very care­ful with the words that I use ... .We are work­ing close­ly with them to fix this sit­u­a­tion that they per­ceive to be hap­pen­ing.”

He said con­tracts were award­ed be­fore his tenure un­der for­mer sec­re­tary Ian Pol­lard.

He al­so re­spond­ed to com­plaints about dust af­fect­ing res­i­dents near the Rise­land project and said the con­trac­tor has in­stalled screens to mit­i­gate the im­pact on near­by com­mu­ni­ties.

Rise­land hous­ing project

100 town­hous­es (100 units)

30 du­plex units (30 units)

Ad­ven­ture Phase III

Five high-rise apart­ment build­ings - four 3-bed­room units per floor (60 units)

Ten 3-bed­room du­plex units (10 units)

Ten 2-bed­room du­plex units (10 units)

Twen­ty 2-bed­room sin­gle fam­i­ly-units (20 units)

Twen­ty 3-bed­room sin­gle-fam­i­ly units (20 units)