PNM takes issue with composition of LandmarkTT board

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

State en­ti­ty Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed is fac­ing fresh con­tro­ver­sy, this time not over the award­ing of con­tracts but grow­ing scruti­ny sur­round­ing the com­po­si­tion of its board.

The com­pa­ny, which is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) over the pro­cure­ment process used for a $100 mil­lion con­tract tied to the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment project in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do, is head­ed by CEO Nis­chall Poona.

Sev­er­al so­cial me­dia posts have al­leged that Poona and his wife, Saman­tha Singh Poona, who serves as deputy chair of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), are close friends of Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein. Ad­di­tion­al claims have al­so sur­faced al­leg­ing that an­oth­er mem­ber of the Land­mark­TT board is re­lat­ed to a mem­ber of Ho­sein’s staff.

At yes­ter­day’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) me­dia brief­ing, Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca MP Do­minic Ro­main said, “This is a Gov­ern­ment that loves to talk about ap­point­ing per­sons based on mer­i­toc­ra­cy. I ask the ques­tion; what was the process used to hire the cur­rent CEO of Land­mark­TT? What is his re­la­tion­ship to the line min­is­ter, Mr Sad­dam Ho­sein? And we will dis­cuss that fur­ther and share that in­for­ma­tion with you all in the com­ing days. But I can tell you, it’s re­al­ly and tru­ly an in­ter­est­ing web.

“What we have seen present it­self as well on so­cial me­dia over the last cou­ple of days is a com­plex web of re­la­tion­ships in­volv­ing ex­ec­u­tives of Land­mark­TT, fam­i­ly mem­bers, close work as­so­ciates of the cur­rent line min­is­ter.”

Ho­sein has re­mained mum on all the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against the new­ly formed en­ti­ty this week. Since Mon­day, when Guardian Me­dia broke the sto­ry about the OPR’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the com­pa­ny, Ho­sein has not an­swered calls to his cell­phone nor ques­tions posed via What­sApp. On Wednes­day, he walked away when ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment.

Poona has al­so de­clined calls to his phone and has not re­spond­ed to mes­sages.

Yes­ter­day, MP Ro­main said Ho­sein’s si­lence is con­cern­ing.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly, mem­bers of the me­dia would have at­tempt­ed to speak to the line min­is­ter, Sad­dam Ho­sein, on this mat­ter, and he has been un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly qui­et. Min­is­ter Ho­sein is not known to be a man of few words,” he said.

“He loves to see a cam­era, loves to see a mi­cro­phone, so that when we see him en­ter­ing the Par­lia­ment and the me­dia is at­tempt­ing to speak to him, all of a sud­den he’s too busy, he’s un­able to stop to speak.”

Ro­main al­so point­ed to con­cerns raised by so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley in his com­plaint against Land­mark­TT to the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), which trig­gered the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ever­s­ley ques­tioned whether the new­ly formed state en­ter­prise in­ten­tion­al­ly tried to re­strict com­pe­ti­tion and ex­clude qual­i­fied con­trac­tors. The OPR has asked for ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments from Land­mark­TT, which were pro­vid­ed and are cur­rent­ly un­der re­view.

Ref­er­enc­ing Ever­s­ley’s com­plaint let­ter, Ro­main said it was al­leged that the pro­cure­ment process for the $100 mil­lion Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment project was un­fair­ly rushed and may have favoured in­sid­ers.

Ever­s­ley said con­trac­tors were giv­en less than two weeks to pre­pare com­plex de­sign, en­gi­neer­ing and fi­nanc­ing pro­pos­als, while al­so prov­ing an abil­i­ty to ac­cess ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$100 mil­lion in fi­nanc­ing and at­tend­ing manda­to­ry site vis­its.

Ro­main not­ed that Land­mark­TT re­ject­ed re­quests for dead­line ex­ten­sions de­spite more than 20 tech­ni­cal ques­tions be­ing raised by po­ten­tial bid­ders. He con­tend­ed the time­line was so tight that no con­trac­tor with­out pri­or knowl­edge of the project could re­al­is­ti­cal­ly have pre­pared a com­pli­ant sub­mis­sion with­in the time­frame.

On March 19 at a post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing, Ho­sein ex­plained that Land­mark­TT aims to meet the de­mand for high-qual­i­ty, un­sub­sidised hous­ing, specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing mid­dle- to up­per-in­come earn­ers who may not qual­i­fy for sub­sidised Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) units. The State pro­vides idle land for de­vel­op­ment, while pri­vate de­vel­op­ers pro­vide the fi­nanc­ing and car­ry out con­struc­tion, he said. Un­like the HDC mod­el, Ho­sein em­pha­sised that the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides no con­struc­tion fund­ing and de­vel­op­ers bear the full cost and re­cov­er their in­vest­ment through the sale of the units. The mod­el, Ho­sein said, is struc­tured so the State re­ceives a share of the land val­ue or prof­its once the homes are sold.

MP Ro­main said, “So now, they have cre­at­ed this Land­mark­TT com­pa­ny, which is es­sen­tial­ly HDC (Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion) for the wealthy. But they ac­cuse the PNM of poli­cies that are geared to make the rich rich­er.”

He added, “And this al­so casts doubt and puts the spot­light on the Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme, be­cause they are go­ing to be util­is­ing a sim­i­lar method­ol­o­gy where they will be giv­ing out state land to these de­vel­op­ers to de­vel­op all of these dif­fer­ent projects.”