OPR probes $100M LandmarkTT’s housing contract

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sam­[email protected]

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) is in­ves­ti­gat­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns over new­ly formed state en­ter­prise Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed’s han­dling of the pro­cure­ment process for the $100 mil­lion Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment project in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

In­cor­po­rat­ed just this year, Land­mark­TT serves as a spe­cial-pur­pose ve­hi­cle un­der the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate a new pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) mod­el for un­sub­sidised, high-qual­i­ty hous­ing.

In a let­ter dat­ed April 20 to the state com­pa­ny, the OPR said it re­ceived for­mal com­plaints al­leg­ing that Land­mark­TT used a se­lec­tive ten­der­ing process in­stead of open bid­ding, po­ten­tial­ly breach­ing the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the com­plaint was lodged by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

The reg­u­la­tor said it had been in­formed that Land­mark­TT “ap­plied a se­lec­tive ten­der­ing process, con­tra the ob­jects” of the act in re­la­tion to the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment.

The OPR al­so warned that giv­en the re­port­ed TT$100 mil­lion val­ue of the con­tract, “the risk of neg­a­tive fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic im­pact is el­e­vat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in high risk/high val­ue pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings, where val­ue for mon­ey is not re­alised.”

In the cor­re­spon­dence ad­dressed to Land­mark­TT CEO Nis­chall Shane Poona, the OPR re­mind­ed the com­pa­ny that the law man­dates pub­lic bod­ies to con­duct pro­cure­ment in ac­cor­dance with the act and warned that “any pro­cure­ment con­tract or agree­ment that is not en­tered in­to in ac­cor­dance with this act shall be void and il­le­gal.”

The reg­u­la­tor stressed that open bid­ding is the re­quired pro­cure­ment method un­less there is prop­er jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use an­oth­er ap­proach.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, where a se­lec­tive pro­cure­ment process is ap­plied, Land­mark­TT is re­quired to jus­ti­fy same in ac­cor­dance with the pub­lic pro­cure­ment le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The OPR fur­ther raised con­cerns over trans­paren­cy re­quire­ments, stat­ing it was un­able to lo­cate any elec­tron­ic pub­li­ca­tion of the con­tract award as re­quired un­der Sec­tion 36(1) of the act.

It re­mind­ed that the law re­quires pub­lic bod­ies to “prompt­ly pub­lish” no­tices of con­tract awards, in­clud­ing the con­trac­tor’s name, con­tract price, works to be car­ried out and the award date.

In the let­ter, the OPR di­rect­ed Land­mark­TT to pro­vide, with­in sev­en work­ing days, a copy of the pro­cure­ment records for the Al­lam­by project, a list of all con­tract awards and frame­work agree­ments from Feb­ru­ary 2026 to present, de­tails of its com­pli­ance with pub­li­ca­tion re­quire­ments and ex­pla­na­tions for any fail­ure to prompt­ly pub­lish no­tices of award.

The reg­u­la­tor al­so warned Land­mark­TT that un­der the act, “a pub­lic body or per­son who, with­out rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, fails to com­ply with a di­rec­tion is­sued un­der this Act com­mits an of­fence and is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of one hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars.”

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked the OPR for an up­date on the mat­ter. The reg­u­la­tor re­spond­ed, “The pub­lic body in ques­tion has com­plied with the di­rec­tive with­in the stip­u­lat­ed dead­line. This mat­ter is present­ly un­der re­view by the OPR, and as such, no fur­ther com­ments will be made to en­sure the in­tegri­ty of the OPR’s re­view process.”

Asked if a sus­pen­sion or­der was is­sued for the Al­lam­by project, the OPR said, “No such ap­pli­ca­tion was filed on this mat­ter.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site Al­lam­by project yes­ter­day, there was heavy con­struc­tion on­go­ing in the large fenced-off area. While there were work­ers at the site, Guardian Me­dia was un­able to as­cer­tain the con­trac­tor they were work­ing for.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact line min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein and Land­mark­TT CEO Poona yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

Land­mark­TT does not yet have a ful­ly func­tion­al web­site. Cur­rent­ly, the web­page has a count­down timer to the launch of the full web­site. Yes­ter­day, it said it was 24 days away.

On March 19 at a post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing, Ho­sein un­der­scored the im­por­tance of Land­mark­TT com­ply­ing with the OPR.

Guardian Me­dia asked then about the process be­ing used to choose de­vel­op­ers for the al­lo­ca­tion of state lands.

Ho­sein prompt­ly re­spond­ed, “So the process is al­ways guid­ed by the OPR. We can’t go be­hind the OPR. So that is what we have to do.”

Robin­son-Reg­is:

Why has work not stopped?

Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is ques­tion­ing why the $100 mil­lion Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment project has not been halt­ed.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said while she wel­comed the OPR’s in­ter­ven­tion, she was con­cerned that no stop or­der or sus­pen­sion had been is­sued de­spite what she de­scribed as se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise.

She al­so claimed that work on the project site ap­peared to be con­tin­u­ing “both day and night” and ques­tioned, “Is it pos­si­ble that the con­trac­tor is try­ing to do pre­lim­i­nary work in or­der for pay­ment to be made even if this con­tract is even­tu­al­ly halt­ed by the OPR?”

The for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter added, “Land­mark­TT’s ori­gins are ques­tion­able from in­cep­tion, and it seems as though they in­tend to pro­ceed along this ques­tion­able path through­out their ex­is­tence.

“The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve full trans­paren­cy and as­sur­ance that pub­lic pro­cure­ment is be­ing con­duct­ed law­ful­ly, fair­ly and in the best in­ter­est of tax­pay­ers.”

Robin­son-Reg­is said an­oth­er com­plaint has been filed by at­tor­ney and for­mer min­is­ter of mou­s­ing Ran­dall Mitchell on be­half of ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, re­quest­ing that the work be halt­ed.

She has pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cused the ad­min­is­tra­tion of us­ing the com­pa­ny to al­low “rich friends and fi­nanciers” to ac­cess prime state lands at pep­per­corn rates (nom­i­nal or ex­treme­ly low costs) un­der the guise of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships.

In April, the OPR halt­ed the award of $3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts to 11 com­pa­nies fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of pro­cure­ment ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and a lack of trans­paren­cy.

This reg­u­la­to­ry in­ter­ven­tion, trig­gered by com­plaints from the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) and op­po­si­tion fig­ures, is pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view to en­sure com­pli­ance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.