Robinson-Regis questions Lee’s oversight; calls for resignation

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is ac­cus­ing Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee of fail­ing to ex­er­cise prop­er over­sight over his min­istry, fol­low­ing fresh con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s sus­pend­ed $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing pro­gramme.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, Robin­son-Reg­is crit­i­cised Lee af­ter he dis­tanced him­self from a Sun­day Ex­press re­port al­leg­ing that “com­pen­sa­tion” was of­fered to a re­porter in an at­tempt to kill a sto­ry linked to the HDC con­tracts now un­der scruti­ny, say­ing he didn't know any­thing about what was re­port­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is de­scribed the min­is­ter’s re­sponse as an­oth­er in­stance of “I don’t know”, ar­gu­ing that it re­flect­ed a trou­bling lack of aware­ness about de­vel­op­ments with­in his min­istry.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this is not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent,” she said.

She point­ed to a se­ries of con­tro­ver­sies in the hous­ing sec­tor over re­cent months, in­clud­ing con­cerns sur­round­ing HDC hous­ing al­lo­ca­tions, de­layed hous­ing projects, ques­tions over the num­ber of com­plet­ed homes, in­her­i­tance tax­es on HDC prop­er­ties, in­creas­es in unit prices from $500,000 to $750,000, the re­place­ment of ap­proved ap­pli­cants, and the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of squat­ters oc­cu­py­ing HDC units.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ref­er­enced con­cerns over the sus­pend­ed De­sign-Build-Fi­nance pro­cure­ment arrange­ments val­ued at $3.4 bil­lion, which are now un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.

Join­ing the crit­i­cism was Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who ques­tioned Lee’s aware­ness of de­ci­sions be­ing made with­in the hous­ing sec­tor.

In a state­ment post­ed on so­cial me­dia, Gon­za­les claimed the HDC board had fired em­ploy­ees, reg­u­larised il­le­gal oc­cu­pants of HDC homes, im­posed trans­fer fees on HDC cus­tomers with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval, and award­ed mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts to con­trac­tors with “no proven record in build­ing not even an ajoupa”.

Gon­za­les al­so ref­er­enced al­le­ga­tions that bribes were of­fered to the Sun­day Ex­press to sup­press re­port­ing on the con­tracts con­tro­ver­sy.

“All of this and David Lee knows noth­ing while he earns al­most $60k month­ly salary,” Gon­za­les wrote.

Robin­son-Reg­is ar­gued that Lee could not sep­a­rate him­self from re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the min­istry’s op­er­a­tions.

“A Min­is­ter is not a spec­ta­tor. He is not an ob­serv­er com­ment­ing from the side­lines. He is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly re­spon­si­ble for the Min­istry un­der his charge,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

Cit­ing Sec­tion 79 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, she said min­is­ters are re­spon­si­ble for ex­er­cis­ing “gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol” over their min­istries and must an­swer to Par­lia­ment and the pub­lic for their de­part­ments’ ac­tiv­i­ties.

Robin­son-Reg­is ques­tioned who was mak­ing de­ci­sions with­in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment if the min­is­ter re­mained un­aware of key de­vel­op­ments.

“If Min­is­ter Lee gen­uine­ly does not know what is hap­pen­ing in his Min­istry, then the coun­try must ask a far more alarm­ing ques­tion: Who ex­act­ly is run­ning the hous­ing sec­tor of Trinidad and To­ba­go?” she asked.

She al­so ref­er­enced al­le­ga­tions of “a se­ri­ous coverup, pos­si­ble bribery and cor­rup­tion and oth­er ir­reg­u­lar ac­tions” linked to the HDC mat­ter.

“If the Min­is­ter can­not do the job, then he needs to do the ho­n­ourable thing and just re­sign,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.