Opposition MP questions LandmarkTT hiring and alleged political links

KE­JAN HAYNES

Se­nior Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion MP Do­minic Ro­main has raised con­cerns over ap­point­ments linked to Land­mark­TT and ques­tioned the Of­fice of Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s (OPR) over­sight, while point­ing to al­leged po­lit­i­cal links with­in the state-owned de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment struc­ture.

Speak­ing at a PNM press con­fer­ence a short while ago, Ro­main ques­tioned the process used to hire se­nior per­son­nel at Land­mark­TT and asked whether the State could guar­an­tee val­ue for mon­ey in its land de­vel­op­ment mod­el.

He said: “What was the process used to hire the cur­rent [man­age­ment] of Land­mark­TT?"

The Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca MP al­so ques­tioned over­sight and pro­cure­ment safe­guards, ar­gu­ing that pub­lic con­fi­dence in the project de­pends on trans­paren­cy in ap­point­ments and con­tract­ing. His com­ments come as the OPR is re­port­ed­ly prob­ing Land­mark­TT over al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in a $100 mil­lion ten­der for the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in Corinth.

Guardian Me­dia re­cent­ly re­port­ed that a com­plaint was filed with the OPR al­leg­ing that Land­mark­TT im­prop­er­ly used se­lec­tive ten­der­ing in­stead of open bid­ding, po­ten­tial­ly breach­ing the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

The com­plaint al­so high­light­ed a com­pressed two-week time­line for bid­ders to pre­pare com­plex de­sign and fi­nanc­ing pro­pos­als.

Ro­main fur­ther raised con­cerns over the wider Na­tion­al Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme, ques­tion­ing how ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est for ma­jor state land projects would be as­sessed and whether po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed de­vel­op­ers could ben­e­fit.

Turn­ing to state me­dia, Ro­main al­leged the use of pub­lic broad­cast­ing plat­forms to ad­vance par­ti­san mes­sag­ing, specif­i­cal­ly cit­ing pro­gram­ming on 91.1fm (TTT Lim­it­ed ) to make it seem as though the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was stop­ping the pro­duc­tion of low in­come hous­ing, but he not­ed that giv­en the mod­el, the hous­es are for mid­dle-in­come earn­ers not low in­come.

Ro­main said he would share fur­ther in­for­ma­tion in the com­ing days and urged con­tin­ued scruti­ny of the Land­mark­TT mod­el, in­clud­ing how land val­ues and re­turns to the State will be cal­cu­lat­ed once projects are com­plet­ed.

The com­ments fol­low state­ments made in April by Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein, who out­lined the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to Land­mark­TT at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence.

At the time, Min­is­ter Ho­sein said the mod­el re­lies on pri­vate de­vel­op­ers fi­nanc­ing con­struc­tion on state lands, with the State ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from in­creased land val­ues once de­vel­op­ment is com­plet­ed. He ex­plained that the ap­proach al­lows the gov­ern­ment to “mon­e­tise” state as­sets with­out up­front cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture while ex­pand­ing the hous­ing sup­ply for mid-to-up­per-in­come earn­ers.

Min­is­ter Ho­sein said: “The de­vel­op­ers will have to put out all of their cash. The Gov­ern­ment is not pay­ing for this. We are pro­vid­ing the lands. We have the lands, and the de­vel­op­ers build on the lands.”

He added that “from the time you put con­crete on that land, the val­ue will in fact in­crease.”

Ro­main’s cur­rent ques­tions di­rect­ly chal­lenge those as­sur­ances, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing pro­cure­ment trans­paren­cy, board com­po­si­tion, and whether the State is re­ceiv­ing “best val­ue” un­der the arrange­ment.

Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed was in­cor­po­rat­ed ear­li­er this year to spear­head the State Land In­vest­ment and De­vel­op­ment Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ship mod­el.

Ro­main ar­gued that the mod­el re­quires stronger pub­lic scruti­ny giv­en the scale of state as­sets in­volved.

He said: “The Op­po­si­tion will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments and pro­vide fur­ther in­for­ma­tion as it be­comes avail­able.”