Camille, Saddam trade words over procurement and housing projects

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A war of words has erupt­ed be­tween for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein over the Beau­car­ro and Al­lam­by hous­ing de­vel­op­ment projects, as well as com­ments re­lat­ing to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR).

Robin­son-Reg­is raised con­cerns about the lands in­volved yes­ter­day, while al­so crit­i­cis­ing Ho­sein’s re­marks sug­gest­ing that the OPR ig­nored or ne­glect­ed com­plaints dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) tenure, and that the OPR board “will soon have many ques­tions to an­swer,” with com­par­isons to be made be­tween its han­dling of cur­rent mat­ters and those un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Her com­ments came af­ter Moru­ga res­i­dent Ed­ward Collins filed a com­plaint with the OPR re­gard­ing the Beau­car­ro, Cou­va, de­vel­op­ment be­ing un­der­tak­en by Land­mark­TT.

Robin­son-Reg­is yes­ter­day de­scribed the Beau­car­ro pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise as “high­ly ques­tion­able,” say­ing it ap­pears to fol­low “the same trou­bling pat­tern” as the Al­lam­by, San Fer­nan­do, res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment mat­ter.

She said the pub­lic de­serves ur­gent clar­i­ty on the sta­tus of the Al­lam­by and Beau­car­ro lands, which were pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied as part of set­tle­ment arrange­ments for for­mer Petrotrin work­ers.

“These lands car­ried sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al and so­cial im­por­tance aris­ing from com­mit­ments made dur­ing Petrotrin’s re­struc­tur­ing,” she said.

“Cit­i­zens de­serve an­swers: Were work­ers con­sult­ed? Have the orig­i­nal com­mit­ments re­gard­ing these lands been aban­doned? What pro­tec­tions ex­ist for af­fect­ed work­ers? Why were these lands re­pur­posed with­out prop­er pub­lic trans­paren­cy?”

Re­fer­ring to a re­port­ed manda­to­ry site vis­it on May 14, in­volv­ing a “group of con­trac­tors” for the Beau­car­ro project, Robin­son-Reg­is raised fur­ther ques­tions.

“Who se­lect­ed them? What cri­te­ria were used? Why were oth­er qual­i­fied con­trac­tors ex­clud­ed? Was the Pro­cure­ment De­pos­i­to­ry utilised? How does re­strict­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion sat­is­fy the prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and val­ue for mon­ey un­der the law?” she asked.

She said Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain why open com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing was avoid­ed, whether po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions in­flu­enced con­trac­tor se­lec­tion, whether pro­cure­ment time­lines were struc­tured to lim­it com­pe­ti­tion, and whether tax­pay­ers are be­ing ex­posed to in­flat­ed costs and re­duced val­ue.

“There are se­ri­ous con­cerns that qual­i­fied con­trac­tors reg­is­tered with the Pro­cure­ment De­pos­i­to­ry were de­nied an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate. Equal­ly con­cern­ing is the ap­par­ent dis­re­gard for the OPR’s au­thor­i­ty and in­ter­ven­tion,” she said.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so de­scribed Ho­sein’s com­ments on the OPR as “deeply trou­bling,” say­ing they raise con­cerns about re­spect for in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions and due process.

“To sug­gest the reg­u­la­tor and the board ‘will have many ques­tions to an­swer’ can rea­son­ably be in­ter­pret­ed as an at­tempt to in­tim­i­date or pres­sure an in­de­pen­dent reg­u­la­to­ry body sim­ply be­cause it is car­ry­ing out its law­ful man­date un­der the Pro­cure­ment Act,” she said.

She added that if the min­is­ter had in­for­ma­tion about com­plaints al­leged­ly ig­nored, the ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse would be to pur­sue the mat­ter through prop­er le­gal and in­sti­tu­tion­al chan­nels rather than mak­ing pub­lic ac­cu­sa­tions that could un­der­mine the reg­u­la­tor’s in­tegri­ty.

Robin­son-Reg­is said that be­tween 2023 and 2025, mat­ters were brought be­fore the OPR, but “nev­er on the scale cur­rent­ly con­fronting Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“Un­like this ad­min­is­tra­tion, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion did not ig­nore or by­pass the OPR in the con­duct of op­er­a­tions,” she said.

“What is now deeply con­cern­ing is the ap­par­ent pat­tern by this ad­min­is­tra­tion of dis­re­gard­ing the role, au­thor­i­ty and over­sight re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the OPR.”

She fur­ther said the min­is­ter’s com­ments ap­peared “less about ac­count­abil­i­ty and more about cre­at­ing a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion from se­ri­ous ques­tions sur­round­ing his own cir­cum­stances,” adding that at­tacks on over­sight bod­ies were un­for­tu­nate and dam­ag­ing to pub­lic con­fi­dence in pro­cure­ment process­es.

In re­sponse, Ho­sein strong­ly re­ject­ed Robin­son-Reg­is’ crit­i­cisms, say­ing she “has no moral au­thor­i­ty to speak on hous­ing,” cit­ing what he de­scribed as fail­ures dur­ing her tenure.

“Mrs Robin­son-Reg­is has no moral au­thor­i­ty to speak on hous­ing as she has presided over the great­est fail­ure in the hous­ing sec­tor over the last 10 years,” he said.

“She sat quite com­fort­ably in the Hous­ing Min­istry while her ju­nior min­is­ter had se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer re­gard­ing ques­tion­able busi­ness re­la­tion­ships in the UK.”

He al­so ref­er­enced the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2025 re­port, claim­ing it found $78 mil­lion was im­prop­er­ly used by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to pay con­trac­tors for grass cut­ting rather than house con­struc­tion.

“I refuse to en­gage a woman who is at the end of her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer with ze­ro ounce of shame,” he said.

On the pro­cure­ment mat­ter, Ho­sein said he was ad­vised that the OPR had not in­formed Land­mark­TT of any com­plaint re­gard­ing Beau­car­ro.

“Your news­pa­per promi­nent­ly car­ried a PNM-filed com­plaint by a sit­ting PNM MP,” he said.

“The PNM is go­ing at all costs to pre­vent hous­es from be­ing built and per­sons from get­ting jobs.”

He re­it­er­at­ed that no pub­lic funds will be used for the Beau­car­ro project and said the Gov­ern­ment is await­ing the OPR’s find­ings.

“At present, we await the OPR find­ings to com­pare their ac­tions un­der the PNM and the UNC, as the PNM and the OPR may have many ques­tions of their own to an­swer,” he added.