$3.4B HDC contracts scrapped

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has of­fi­cial­ly can­celled its con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion De­sign-Build-Fi­nance (DBF) hous­ing pro­cure­ment pro­gramme. Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der con­firmed this yes­ter­day, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sion to pull the process en­tire­ly rather than al­low it to be­come mired in pro­longed dis­putes and de­lays that could fur­ther post­pone the de­liv­ery of thou­sands of homes.

This brings an abrupt end to a process that is still un­der scruti­ny from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) since April.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der al­so con­firmed that the can­celled pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise, which was in­tend­ed to de­liv­er ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,700 hous­ing units, will now be re-ten­dered along­side an ex­pand­ed slate of hous­ing projects.

“It was go­ing to be a back and forth, and be­fore it be­came some­thing that was just go­ing to drag on, we’re not leav­ing it in lim­bo,” Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia.

“We took the de­ci­sion to say, look, you’re not hap­py with this process, we’re go­ing to pull it, we’re go­ing to come back at it, where any of the is­sues that you had a con­cern with be­fore will not ex­ist.”

The de­ci­sion fol­lows an of­fi­cial No­tice of Can­cel­la­tion is­sued by the HDC on June 17, ter­mi­nat­ing pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings for its “Port­fo­lio 1” hous­ing project with im­me­di­ate ef­fect un­der Sec­tion 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

In the no­tice, the cor­po­ra­tion said it had de­ter­mined that dis­con­tin­u­ing the ex­er­cise was in the “pub­lic in­ter­est.”

Sec­tion 33 of the Pro­cure­ment Act per­mits a procur­ing en­ti­ty to can­cel pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings be­fore a con­tract is award­ed, pro­vid­ed the rea­sons are prop­er­ly record­ed. While the HDC con­firmed that those rea­sons have been doc­u­ment­ed in the of­fi­cial pro­cure­ment record, they have not been pub­licly dis­closed.

Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty re­mained de­liv­er­ing hous­ing to cit­i­zens.

“We re­al­ly don’t ap­pre­ci­ate wast­ing this time here, be­cause we re­al­ly want to de­liv­er the hous­es,. So that’s why we’re adding more projects to the roll­out. So in­stead of 11, it might be 21.”

He said the same projects would be re­turned to the mar­ket, along­side ad­di­tion­al hous­ing pack­ages.

“These same projects that have been pulled here will be reis­sued to­geth­er with more, and every sin­gle de­vel­op­er, be­cause that was the num­ber one com­plaint that we got, that some peo­ple felt like they didn’t get time to ten­der, so now every­body has a chance.”

Ex­plain­ing one of the is­sues con­nect­ed to the process, Alexan­der said, “We had is­sues like peo­ple like Emile Elias say­ing how come they didn’t get a ten­der. And the prob­lem was they didn’t ten­der with­in the time frame. They phrased that to ap­peal to pub­lic in­ter­est, but the re­al­i­ty is they were the ones at fault.”

He al­so re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment was ex­plor­ing more ex­pan­sive pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship arrange­ments to ac­cel­er­ate hous­ing con­struc­tion.

“We have some even more ro­bust pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships that we’ll be an­nounc­ing where the State doesn’t even have to sup­ply the land.”

He added, “We’re work­ing with a lot of de­vel­op­ers to try and achieve the tar­gets set by the Prime Min­is­ter, which is a very se­ri­ous goal, and we’re work­ing hard at it.”

The HDC’s can­cel­la­tion no­tice al­so con­firmed that the stand­still pe­ri­od re­quired un­der Sec­tion 35 of the Pro­cure­ment Act had al­ready elapsed and that no con­tract had been en­tered in­to with any sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor.

The stand­still pe­ri­od is a manda­to­ry wait­ing pe­ri­od be­tween the an­nounce­ment of in­tend­ed con­tract awards and the for­mal ex­e­cu­tion of con­tracts. It pro­vides un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions, seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion or chal­lenge as­pects of the process be­fore con­tracts be­come legal­ly bind­ing.

In this case, the HDC is­sued a No­tice of De­ci­sion to Award on April 8 nam­ing 11 in­tend­ed con­trac­tors for var­i­ous hous­ing pack­ages. The stand­still pe­ri­od ran from April 9 to April 22.

The pro­posed awards were col­lec­tive­ly val­ued at more than $3 bil­lion.

The largest pack­age, worth just over $1 bil­lion, was ear­marked for Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing Lim­it­ed. Oth­er in­tend­ed awardees in­clud­ed Hakim Ho­sein Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, CE Man­age­ment and Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, Kei­th’s Trans­port and Gen­er­al Con­tract­ing Ser­vice, Trinidad Pro Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, Oil­field and In­dus­tri­al Hard­ware Lim­it­ed and Bris­tol Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

How­ev­er, on April 17, the OPR in­ter­vened and di­rect­ed the HDC to sus­pend the process pend­ing a re­view of the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings. The reg­u­la­tor’s in­ter­ven­tion came af­ter stake­hold­ers raised con­cerns re­gard­ing com­pli­ance with pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion and the man­ner in which the ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing for the im­me­di­ate dis­missal of the HDC board and Gov­ern­ment’s three hous­ing min­is­ters, fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing pro­cure­ment process.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the HDC’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings for the De­sign-Build-Fi­nance (DBF) hous­ing pro­gramme amount­ed to an ad­mis­sion the process was flawed and should nev­er have pro­gressed to the stage it did.

Beck­les al­leged that the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise in­volved the pro­posed award of con­tracts to favoured Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fi­nanciers and re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed com­pa­nies with lit­tle or no hous­ing de­vel­op­ment ex­pe­ri­ence.

“This can­cel­la­tion rep­re­sents an ad­mis­sion of the in­ap­pro­pri­ate award of state con­tracts un­der high­ly sus­pi­cious and scan­dalous cir­cum­stances,” Beck­les said.

She al­so crit­i­cised Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Anil Roberts, claim­ing they had failed to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful re­sults in the hous­ing sec­tor.

She ar­gued that the min­is­ters, along with the HDC board, should be fired over what she de­scribed as one of the largest pub­lic pro­cure­ment scan­dals in re­cent years.

Beck­les said the Op­po­si­tion would con­tin­ue to scru­ti­nise the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the hous­ing sec­tor and hold it ac­count­able for its de­ci­sions.

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is al­so said the can­cel­la­tion had val­i­dat­ed con­cerns about the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise.

“This con­firms long­stand­ing con­cerns about the in­tegri­ty, man­age­ment, and di­rec­tion of this ten­der­ing process.”

While wel­com­ing the can­cel­la­tion, Robin­son-Reg­is ar­gued that pub­lic re­sources and stake­hold­er time had been wast­ed and called for greater scruti­ny of gov­er­nance and over­sight with­in the hous­ing sec­tor.

One of the com­plaints be­fore the OPR was filed by at­tor­ney Ran­dall Mitchell on be­half of so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley.

Fol­low­ing news of the can­cel­la­tion, Mitchell, who is al­so a for­mer PNM hous­ing min­is­ter, said while the de­ci­sion was wel­come, it did not elim­i­nate the need for the OPR to com­plete its in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pub­licly dis­close its find­ings.

Mitchell said sev­er­al months had passed since com­plaints were sub­mit­ted to the reg­u­la­tor, and ar­gued the pub­lic needs to know whether any breach­es of pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion or pro­cure­ment prin­ci­ples had oc­curred.

“The pub­lic is en­ti­tled to know the out­come of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion and whether any breach­es of the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion or pro­cure­ment prin­ci­ples were iden­ti­fied,” he said.

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion has not yet pub­licly dis­closed the out­come of its re­view.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia the OPR has not is­sued any com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the HDC on that mat­ter.

Ef­forts to con­tact the OPR for a com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.