Ramhit firm withdrew from HDC housing project, Swaratsingh says

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd with­drew from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) bil­lion-dol­lar hous­ing plan be­cause the com­pa­ny was not in­ter­est­ed in the project, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh said.

Swarats­ingh made the com­ment in the Sen­ate on Mon­day while wind­ing up de­bate on the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Amend­ment Bill, 2026. The bill was passed with Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s cast­ing vote af­ter the vote was tied at 15-15, with Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors vot­ing in favour and the Op­po­si­tion’s six sen­a­tors and nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ing against it.

Swarats­ingh was re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised by Op­po­si­tion PNM sen­a­tor San­jiv Bood­hu about the HDC’s $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing plan and state­ments con­cern­ing the Ramhit com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny had re­ceived a con­tract award val­ued at $1,024,817,670.97, ac­cord­ing to the HDC’s no­tice to pro­po­nents on its de­ci­sion to award the con­tract.

Bood­hu said the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor paused the award in April and that the HDC with­drew the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise in June.

“My un­der­stand­ing from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion is that the Ramhits had pulled out of that con­tract­ing; in fact the OPR was in­ves­ti­gat­ing about two-some­thing bil­lion (dol­lars) as the Ramhits had in­di­cat­ed they weren’t in­ter­est­ed in the project. So what the OPR was in­ves­ti­gat­ing was not $3.4 bil­lion, but $2. What­ev­er it was,” Swarats­ingh said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had not in­tro­duced the bill in re­sponse to what hap­pened at the HDC.

Swarats­ingh said that, in the in­ter­im, the Gov­ern­ment had fo­cused on ex­am­in­ing mort­gages so that when HDC con­tracts were ready again, fi­nanc­ing would be avail­able.

“We’ve al­ready sup­port­ed it with mort­gages ap­proved so far. IDB In­vest has giv­en TT Mort­gage Bank $350 mil­lion as a so­cial bond to deal with mort­gages for peo­ple who are so­cial­ly chal­lenged, sin­gle fam­i­lies, sin­gle women.

“We’re work­ing on a fa­cil­i­ty to give TTMB an­oth­er $1 bil­lion with mort­gages through the World Bank so we’ll be able to build a ro­bust hous­ing sec­tor... we can’t fund every­thing, we need the en­er­gy sec­tor to start kick­ing in at a faster rate,” he said.

Bood­hu not­ed that Min­is­ter in the Hous­ing Min­istry Phillip Alexan­der had spo­ken dur­ing the de­bate about the Gov­ern­ment’s in­abil­i­ty to “get hous­es built in a rea­son­able time” and had gone on to men­tion the Ramhit com­pa­ny.

Bood­hu said, “The same Ramhit who, out of a $3.4 bil­lion dol­lar pack­age, was award­ed $1 bil­lion of it, where­as ten oth­er con­trac­tors were to share the re­main­ing 2.4 bil­lion. Same Ramhit who gone from build­ing house to pro­vid­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice with ve­hi­cles—the same po­lice ser­vice who now have a $2 mil­lion dis­cre­tion with­out OPR over­sight pur­suant to this Bill, the same TTPS who al­so falls un­der na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­emp­tions in the Bill.

“The same TTPS who had op­er­a­tional ad­min­is­tra­tion tak­en away from it and hand­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter in the ap­point­ment of a Head of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions… So the com­bi­na­tion of all these fac­tors is very in­ter­est­ing.”

Bood­hu said Alexan­der had brought the Ramhit fam­i­ly to the at­ten­tion of the pub­lic by men­tion­ing the com­pa­ny dur­ing the de­bate.

“The co­in­ci­dence of Alexan­der’s re­fer­ral to one con­trac­tor is un­can­ny—as they’re op­er­at­ing both in hous­ing and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty which are both ex­empt­ed from pro­cure­ment law due to this Bill...”

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ex­pressed con­cerns about the bill. In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis said it was un­wise to de­val­ue ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence, re­gard­less of where they came from.

Lewis al­so not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s state­ments that the In­de­pen­dents’ amend­ments would not be ac­cept­ed. He said that if amend­ments were to be con­sid­ered and time spent on them, he did not want to waste “...Big peo­ple time, so if you tell me in ad­vance ‘don’t both­er’, I’d give my ob­ser­va­tions on the bill but not what we may wish to do, mov­ing it for­ward.”

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish said he had to ask the UNC Gov­ern­ment a ques­tion, since the bill was es­tab­lished in 2015.

“...Same gov­ern­ment, dif­fer­ent name but same Prime Min­is­ter — you guys brought this leg­is­la­tion that es­tab­lished guardrails. Why are you bring­ing amend­ments now that di­min­ish the Pro­cure­ment ‘watch­dog’s’ role? I don’t un­der­stand that, I don’t get it!”

“You’re telling every­body we need speed but you tell me one ex­am­ple whether the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor has shut down some pro­cure­ment! I don’t know of any — ex­cept prob­a­bly re­cent­ly, that was $3.4 bil­lion! But be­sides that this is an act that’s in place since 2015! So what you’re talk­ing about speed? Be­cause the Reg­u­la­tor seem not have been do­ing any­thing (shut down)... this is why (In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny) Vieira spoke about bobol! I won’t speak of that but I don’t un­der­stand you cre­at­ed the ‘watch­dog’, es­tab­lished the guardrails, now to­day you’re break­ing it down!”