Hosein unable to say how many work at LandmarkTT

Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein was un­able to say how many peo­ple are em­ployed at state-owned Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd, telling Par­lia­ment that he would have to ver­i­fy the fig­ures with his min­istry.

The is­sue was raised by Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, where the min­is­ter was ques­tioned about the com­pa­ny’s $3.6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for 2027.

Asked whether the al­lo­ca­tion was in­tend­ed to cov­er the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tional ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ho­sein replied, “Yes.”

Gon­za­les then asked how many em­ploy­ees the com­pa­ny had.

“I’ll have to check with you,” Ho­sein said, ex­plain­ing that Land­mark­TT was new­ly formed and its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture was still await­ing ap­proval from the Per­son­nel De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said the com­pa­ny’s al­lo­ca­tion cov­ered per­son­nel, ma­te­ri­als, sup­plies and oth­er op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

Gon­za­les sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the for­mal or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture was still be­ing fi­nalised, to which Ho­sein replied, “Yes.”

The MP then asked whether the peo­ple em­ployed by Land­mark­TT were on short-term con­tracts.

“Some of them are on short term, yes,” Ho­sein replied.

Gon­za­les pressed him for a break­down.

“How many of them do you have on short term?” he asked.

“I’ll have to get that num­ber for you,” Ho­sein said.

The MP then asked how many em­ploy­ees were on full-term con­tracts, point­ing out that the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture was still un­der re­view.

“I’ll get that num­ber for you al­so,” the min­is­ter replied.

Gon­za­les asked whether Ho­sein would pro­vide a break­down of em­ploy­ees on con­tract and those on short-term con­tracts.

“I’ll ver­i­fy with the Min­istry, yes,” Ho­sein said.

The MP made a fi­nal at­tempt to es­tab­lish the com­pa­ny’s staffing com­ple­ment, ask­ing whether the min­is­ter could pro­vide an es­ti­mate of the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple em­ployed.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that num­ber,” Ho­sein replied.

Land­mark­TT was es­tab­lished to use a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship mod­el to de­vel­op un­der­utilised State lands in­to res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties, pri­mar­i­ly for mid­dle- and up­per-in­come earn­ers.

The com­pa­ny has al­so faced scruti­ny from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion over its pro­cure­ment process for the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do. The OPR re­ceived com­plaints al­leg­ing that Land­mark­TT used se­lec­tive ten­der­ing in­stead of open bid­ding for the project.

The reg­u­la­tor has said the mat­ter re­mains un­der re­view af­ter the com­pa­ny com­plied with a di­rec­tive to pro­vide pro­cure­ment records.