Ex-housing minister raises concerns over $3.4B HDC contracts

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has raised con­cerns over the pro­posed award of $3.4 bil­lion in pub­lic hous­ing con­tracts to 11 con­trac­tors, ques­tion­ing the trans­paren­cy and le­gal­i­ty of the process.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said the awards had raised se­ri­ous con­cerns about trans­paren­cy, le­gal­i­ty and the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing homes in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She said what should have been “a straight­for­ward, com­pet­i­tive and trans­par­ent pro­cure­ment process ap­pears hid­den be­hind se­cre­cy,” cit­ing what she de­scribed as ques­tion­able pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion cri­te­ria, the ex­clu­sion of ex­pe­ri­enced lo­cal builders and pos­si­ble breach­es of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) pre­qual­i­fied 28 con­trac­tors some­time last year to bid for de­sign-build-fi­nance ser­vices for hous­ing projects across Trinidad.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the HDC se­lect­ed “three ar­bi­trary line items from the OPR de­pos­i­to­ry” as the ba­sis for pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

By ear­ly 2026, she said, the list was re­duced to 18 con­trac­tors, who were in­vit­ed to site vis­its at se­lect­ed lo­ca­tions be­fore be­ing asked to sub­mit ten­der pro­pos­als.

Fol­low­ing an eval­u­a­tion process, 11 con­trac­tors were se­lect­ed.

She said a stand­still no­tice was is­sued on April 9, al­low­ing ten work­ing days for chal­lenges.

Robin­son-Reg­is not­ed that on­ly Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons had pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence in the hous­ing sec­tor, while the oth­er ten con­trac­tors had no pri­or work with the HDC.

She ar­gued that the process had by­passed con­trac­tors with proven hous­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as a lack of pub­lic dis­clo­sure.

She al­so ques­tioned the length of the stand­still pe­ri­od, say­ing the ten-day win­dow was “well be­low the ac­cept­ed prac­tice of 15-20 work­ing days to al­low for prop­er chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the mag­ni­tude of these projects.”

“That is not a mi­nor over­sight; it un­der­mines the very safe­guard de­signed to en­sure fair­ness, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and the right to con­test,” she said.

Robin­son-Reg­is fur­ther raised con­cerns over what she said was the ab­sence of in­for­ma­tion on project sites, hous­ing de­signs, de­liv­ery time­lines and oth­er key de­tails.

“There is no dis­clo­sure of project sites, hous­ing de­signs, or de­liv­ery time­lines, noth­ing to show the pub­lic what $3.4 bil­lion is ac­tu­al­ly buy­ing,” she said.

She added that thou­sands of cit­i­zens re­mained on the hous­ing wait­ing list while near-com­plete de­vel­op­ments re­mained idle.

Robin­son-Reg­is said it may have been more pru­dent to restart projects such as Cit­rus Close, Carlsen Field, Bon Air or Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers, which she said could be com­plet­ed faster and at a low­er cost.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee for a com­ment, but got no re­sponse un­til press time.