Eteck portfolio moved to Saddam’s ministry

Two months af­ter ten­sions arose be­tween Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies & En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd (Eteck) chair Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark and line Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, the state en­ter­prise has been moved to Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein’s port­fo­lio.

The switch was gazetted yes­ter­day.

Eteck has now been added to the grow­ing port­fo­lio of com­pa­nies un­der Ho­sein, in ad­di­tion to the new com­pa­ny, Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

Dur­ing last week’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Ho­sein had de­scribed Land­mark TT as a spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­ny ap­proved by Cab­i­net to dri­ve pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships in hous­ing de­vel­op­ment. He had said that pri­vate de­vel­op­ers would fi­nance con­struc­tion on idle state lands, with the State re­ceiv­ing a share of the land val­ue when homes are sold, while de­vel­op­ers re­cov­er their con­struc­tion costs.

Ramkissoon-Mark, wife of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark and a lawyer, was a for­mer chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ramkissoon-Mark took is­sue with some de­ci­sions be­ing made and di­rec­tives is­sued to the board, in­clud­ing the state en­ter­prise be­ing di­rect­ed to sign off on a ho­tel man­age­ment agree­ment with the Hilton Trinidad last No­vem­ber.

Ramkissoon-Mark had re­quest­ed that the Min­istry of Trade pro­vide in writ­ing to the State en­ter­prise, writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion that the req­ui­site funds would be re­leased to sup­port the project’s im­ple­men­ta­tion, as it could po­ten­tial­ly ex­pose the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors and of­fi­cers to claims of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty and fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety.

Hilton had a 20-year agree­ment with the T&T Gov­ern­ment, through Eteck, which ex­pired in 2023, fol­low­ing which a deed of vari­a­tion was ex­e­cut­ed for an ad­di­tion­al year, which end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, with pro­vi­sion for a fur­ther short-term con­tin­u­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on the week­end that re­fur­bish­ment works- to the tune of $400 mil­lion- is need­ed to up­grade the ho­tel but there is no pro­vi­sion in the 2025 Bud­get for the in­vest­ment. Giv­en the stale­mate over the re­fur­bish­ment works, and the ho­tel’s in­abil­i­ty to main­tain a Hilton stan­dard, the hote­lier is con­sid­er­ing re­mov­ing its brand from the ho­tel.

The min­istry did not pro­vide Eteck with the let­ter.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that fol­low­ing a meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 7, 2026, be­tween the board and Ma­haraj, the board was told to come up with a busi­ness case for the Hilton Trinidad to be pre­pared by Jan­u­ary 16. In ad­di­tion, the board was tasked with pro­vid­ing a de­tailed prospec­tus for a po­ten­tial Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) arrange­ment for the ho­tel.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that in fol­low-up cor­re­spon­dence to the Eteck chair, Ma­haraj took is­sue with an au­dit con­duct­ed by the board, and re­mind­ed them that it was not busi­ness as usu­al and that the min­istry ex­pect­ed im­me­di­ate cor­rec­tive ac­tion by the board.

In re­sponse, Ramkissoon-Mark chal­lenged Ma­haraj, not­ing that while cog­nisant of her du­ties, his ac­tions could have been con­strued as tres­pass­ing on the au­ton­o­my of the board. Fur­ther, she chal­lenged his tone of en­gage­ment with the board and re­mind­ed him of the need to com­ply with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act in go­ing for­ward with any PPP arrange­ment.

She al­so took is­sue with his di­rec­tion to be­gin a re­cruit­ment dri­ve for a new chief ex­ec­u­tive of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, giv­en that the present of­fice hold­er has le­gal rights.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to both Ramkissoon-Mark and Ma­haraj last night but got no re­sponse by press time.