JCC backs OPR probe into $3.4B HDC contracts

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The fall­out over $3.4 bil­lion in state hous­ing con­tracts is deep­en­ing, with new de­tails show­ing that the in­ter­ven­tion by the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) was trig­gered by a qui­eter but piv­otal move from the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), even as Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has re­mained silent.

On April 9, the JCC wrote to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) af­ter ver­i­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by a pri­vate cit­i­zen—days be­fore the is­sue es­ca­lat­ed in­to a na­tion­al con­tro­ver­sy. The coun­cil’s ac­tion ul­ti­mate­ly set the stage for the reg­u­la­to­ry in­ter­ven­tion now un­der scruti­ny.

JCC pres­i­dent Fazir Khan said the coun­cil’s con­cerns cen­tre on whether pro­cure­ment rules were fol­lowed, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion stage.

Ac­cord­ing to Khan, the HDC may have failed to no­ti­fy un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders, leav­ing con­trac­tors un­cer­tain about the sta­tus of the process while sig­nif­i­cant con­tracts were be­ing fi­nalised.

Min­is­ter Lee has so far de­clined to ad­dress the con­tro­ver­sy pub­licly. Yes­ter­day, he by­passed mem­bers of the me­dia, walk­ing silent­ly in­to Par­lia­ment be­fore join­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Kei­th Scot­land, with whom he spoke as they en­tered the Red House. Mul­ti­ple calls and mes­sages to the min­is­ter since the is­sue emerged have gone unan­swered.

Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism has dom­i­nat­ed head­lines, be­gin­ning with for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who raised an alarm on Mon­day.

The JCC pres­i­dent said the ap­par­ent lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion raised se­ri­ous ques­tions un­der pro­cure­ment law and war­rant­ed im­me­di­ate scruti­ny by the reg­u­la­tor.

“On the face of it, it ap­pears ir­reg­u­lar for an award to be giv­en out like this. So, this is not mi­nor; this is ma­jor be­cause the in­ter­est­ed par­ties to ten­der, not be­ing in­formed, didn’t know whether the project was go­ing for­ward. And I could tell you that some of those in­ter­est­ed par­ties ac­tu­al­ly wrote the HDC and didn’t get a re­sponse.”

Khan framed the reg­u­la­tor’s in­ter­ven­tion as a nec­es­sary safe­guard, em­pha­sis­ing that pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is de­signed to in­su­late state con­tract­ing from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence while en­sur­ing fair­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“One of the things about the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, it’s sup­posed to take the min­is­ters and the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and so forth out of the whole mix. But cer­tain­ly, if we’re talk­ing about pol­i­cy, pol­i­cy should sim­ply be if a law is passed to fol­low the law. And if agen­cies are found to be want­i­ng, which is why we have an in­de­pen­dent body, then that needs to be treat­ed very se­ri­ous­ly. And the full weight of the law needs to come down on the agency for breach.”

He added that in a con­text of lim­it­ed pub­lic re­sources, any sug­ges­tion of mis­man­age­ment must be treat­ed with ur­gency.

“We passed the stage where we could af­ford to have any sort of ma­lap­pro­pri­a­tion of fund­ing. It’s very lim­it­ed funds.”

Po­lit­i­cal pres­sure has since in­ten­si­fied, with Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young widen­ing his chal­lenge to the process.

Act­ing as an at­tor­ney, Young has sub­mit­ted ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion to the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor on be­half of ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, seek­ing to bol­ster claims of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the award of con­tracts.

Young has al­so pushed back against the Gov­ern­ment’s de­fence of the projects. On Thurs­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der ar­gued that the con­tracts are struc­tured un­der a de­sign-fi­nance-build mod­el, in­sist­ing the state is not di­rect­ly fund­ing con­struc­tion and there­fore car­ries no fi­nan­cial bur­den.

But Young re­ject­ed that char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion, ar­gu­ing that pro­cure­ment rules and qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dards must still ap­ply re­gard­less of the fi­nanc­ing struc­ture.

“That is a red her­ring be­cause even if it is those types of con­tracts, you have to be qual­i­fied, and there must be a guar­an­tee by HDC that they will pur­chase the hous­es. This is not a pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment where they would be sell­ing the hous­es di­rect­ly to peo­ple. So don’t al­low the smoke­screens to take over,” Young said.

He fur­ther sug­gest­ed the HDC con­tracts could point to a broad­er pat­tern, al­leg­ing that sev­er­al state en­ti­ties are fail­ing to com­ply with trans­paren­cy re­quire­ments un­der pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Young, along with at­tor­ney and for­mer PNM min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, sub­mit­ted ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments to the reg­u­la­tor as part of the on­go­ing probe in­to what they de­scribe as po­ten­tial mis­be­hav­iour in the award of con­tracts.

Among their com­plaints, the at­tor­neys say the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (9)5 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Reg­u­la­tions, which notes that a procur­ing en­ti­ty must is­sue a pub­lic in­vi­ta­tion for pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion where a high-val­ue or spe­cialised pro­cure­ment is in­volved.

“The pro­cure­ment un­der com­plaint is, by any ob­jec­tive mea­sure, a high-val­ue and com­plex pro­cure­ment, in­volv­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.4 bil­lion in pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture across mul­ti­ple pack­ages.”

They ar­gue that there is no ev­i­dence of pub­lic in­vi­ta­tions to pre-qual­i­fy, re­it­er­at­ing that, on the con­trary, a lim­it­ed pool of con­trac­tors was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate.