$3.4B HDC CONTRACTS HALTED

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor has halt­ed the award of $3.4 bil­lion in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) con­tracts to 11 com­pa­nies, just hours af­ter a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter de­fend­ed the process.

The reg­u­la­tor’s chair­man, Bev­er­ly Khan, is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day re­veal­ing that the de­ci­sion was ac­tu­al­ly tak­en on Tues­day—a day af­ter the mat­ter was first raised by for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is—pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings.

Khan said the in­quiry is aimed at en­sur­ing full com­pli­ance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, and de­clined fur­ther com­ment.

Hours be­fore the state­ment was is­sued by the OPR, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der had re­ject­ed the Op­po­si­tion’s al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, in­sist­ing the projects will not cost tax­pay­ers.

In a video record­ing shared to mem­bers of the me­dia, he said: “The State is not putting out one red cent. The $3.4 bil­lion is the val­ue of the con­tracts but it is the de­vel­op­ers and the con­trac­tors that are build­ing these con­tracts, and it is the mort­gage fi­nance com­pa­ny and the banks like Re­pub­lic and Roy­al that are pay­ing the mort­gages for the buy­ers who buy these hous­es. It’s not cost­ing the State a dol­lar. So all of this non­sense that the PNM put out in the pub­lic space is red her­ring non­sense.”

He was re­spond­ing to for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who on Wednes­day ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of op­er­at­ing a “car­tel-style” bid-rig­ging scheme through se­lec­tive ten­der­ing with­in the HDC. He al­so called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pro­cure­ment process in­volv­ing 11 com­pa­nies, some of which he claims were re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der said there was no ba­sis for such ac­tion, not­ing that the process was still with­in the stand­still pe­ri­od, seem­ing­ly un­aware of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor’s de­ci­sion at the time.

“There’s no ev­i­dence here that any wrong­do­ing took place of any kind, so there’s noth­ing for him to take to the po­lice to say to do a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. If Stu­art Young was a re­al lawyer, he would know that, but ob­vi­ous­ly he’s got his law de­gree in a crack­er­jack box.

“The re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is this part of the pro­cure­ment process, the stand-down pe­ri­od, is where peo­ple get to in­ves­ti­gate and check in­to all of the quo­ta­tions and all of the sub­mis­sions to see if the con­tracts are be­ing du­ly and prop­er­ly award­ed. So that’s non­sense.”

The stand­still pe­ri­od is a phase dur­ing which un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders are no­ti­fied, but no bind­ing con­tract is fi­nalised. In this case, it was set to run for 10 work­ing days, be­gin­ning on April 9 and end­ing on April 22.

In her state­ment crit­i­cis­ing the project on Mon­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said the stand­still pe­ri­od was “well be­low the ac­cept­ed prac­tice of 15-20 work­ing days...”

How­ev­er, Alexan­der said the time­frame was con­sis­tent with pro­cure­ment norms and ac­cused the op­po­si­tion of in­con­sis­ten­cy.

“With re­gards to Camille Robin­son Reg­is talk­ing about the 10-day pe­ri­od in this stand-down be­ing too short, the stand-down pe­ri­od is gen­er­al­ly be­tween 10 and 15 days. She, as Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, award­ed con­tracts us­ing the 10-day pe­ri­od for $476 mil­lion, I think that was in San­ta Rosa. So Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, more non­sense. The PNM is just try­ing to beat its base in­to a fren­zy and fool­ing them with non­sense,” he said.

Re­act­ing hours lat­er af­ter the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s an­nounce­ment, how­ev­er, Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment was not con­cerned about the out­come, re­it­er­at­ing re­marks he made out­side Par­lia­ment on Tues­day that the process was trans­par­ent and above board.

“From what I gath­er, this is process and pro­ce­dure, all of it be­ing done in the bright light of trans­paren­cy in the pub­lic space and not hid­den away and cov­ered up as it was un­der the PNM. It is my ex­pec­ta­tion, know­ing the Gov­ern­ment that I am a part of, that every­thing will be re­vealed to be above board.”

He added that he ex­pects the HDC to is­sue a for­mal re­sponse in due course.

How­ev­er, Robin­son-Reg­is, al­so re­act­ing to the reg­u­la­tor’s an­nounce­ment, de­scribed the halt of what she called “ques­tion­able pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ties” as an in­dict­ment on the Gov­ern­ment.

“The fact that the reg­u­la­tor had to step in and di­rect the halt of bil­lions in con­tracts is a clear sign of reck­less­ness on the part of the HDC. The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go want trans­paren­cy, not rushed deals and se­cre­tive de­ci­sions. When the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor has to in­ter­vene to stop $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts, it shows the se­ri­ous­ness of the is­sue. The UNC gov­ern­ment is mis­han­dling pub­lic funds, hav­ing promised good gov­er­nance, but now hav­ing bil­lions in hous­ing con­tracts un­der re­view. You can’t pro­mote trans­paren­cy and then op­er­ate in se­cre­cy.”

At an op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week, Young likened the sit­u­a­tion at the HDC to on­go­ing “car­tel claims” in­volv­ing the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD), which date back to 2017, and past con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL). He al­so in­di­cat­ed that the op­po­si­tion was prepar­ing to chal­lenge the le­gal­i­ty of the process through the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor.

A com­plaint was sub­se­quent­ly filed by at­tor­ney and for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell yes­ter­day, on be­half of ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, with in­struc­tions giv­en to Young in his ca­pac­i­ty as an at­tor­ney.

It said Ever­s­ley was con­cerned with the le­gal­i­ty, pro­pri­ety and in­tegri­ty of the ex­er­cise.

The com­plaint not­ed that con­cerns cen­tred on a com­bi­na­tion of fea­tures of the pro­cure­ment process, in­clud­ing the struc­ture and tim­ing of the pro­cure­ment it­self, the con­di­tions im­posed on par­tic­i­pa­tion, and a se­ries of con­cur­rent re­ports which con­sis­tent­ly raise con­cerns re­gard­ing trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and the in­tegri­ty of the ex­er­cise.

“Tak­en to­geth­er, these mat­ters give rise to a rea­son­able ba­sis to sus­pect that ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties may have oc­curred,” the com­plaint said.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee did not re­spond to re­peat­ed re­quests for com­ment via phone and What­sApp by the time of pub­li­ca­tion.