Saddam probes millions spent on Foster’s YAHP project

Gail Alexan­der
Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­istry has re­quest­ed an au­dit in­to the Youth Agri­cul­tur­al Home­stead (YAHP) pro­gramme fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of cer­tain cost is­sues—and Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein has di­rect­ed PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les' queries on it to for­mer Youth De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings.

Le­gal Af­fairs, Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ho­sein spoke about the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, re­ply­ing to Beck­les' query about whether suc­cess­ful YAHP grad­u­ates will re­ceive their ac­cess to land and starter grants.

Ho­sein said the pro­gramme was start­ed in 2022 " … un­der the Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­istry led by for­mer Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings … a pro­gramme which was tout­ed as a plat­form for youth de­vel­op­ment be­came a sym­bol of PNM's sys­tem­at­ic fail­ure and fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

He said one co­hort of 159 peo­ple has grad­u­at­ed and an­oth­er co­hort awaits. He said the LSA (Land Set­tle­ments Agency) was the ex­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ty for the project, and as of No­vem­ber 17, 2025, the to­tal com­mit­ment on projects award­ed by the LSA to do work on YAHP was $161m.

The LSA re­quest­ed pay­ments amount­ing to $70 m but re­ceived $37m, with a $33m bal­ance in out­stand­ing bills. "Af­ter four years and spend­ing $70m, I'm told they on­ly built eight starter homes, and the ap­prox­i­mate cost to com­plete the project will be $86m, and more bills keep com­ing, which might take it to $182m," Ho­sein added.

Ho­sein al­leged, "One con­trac­tor who re­ceived a con­tract of about $8.6m was the same con­trac­tor that bought the per­son­al ve­hi­cle of the for­mer, for­mer prime min­is­ter, and the site that con­trac­tor was re­spon­si­ble for is on­ly about 60 per cent com­plet­ed. I'm told that the li­cence to oc­cu­py was signed by unau­tho­rised in­di­vid­u­als, al­low­ing per­sons to oc­cu­py land.

"Based on all these is­sues, I'm in­formed that the Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­istry has now re­quest­ed an au­dit in­to this par­tic­u­lar project," he said, adding if Beck­les want­ed more in­for­ma­tion on this, "I'll give her, but she can al­so ask Fos­ter Cum­mings."

Mat­ters in URP re­ferred to po­lice—Ameen

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen said mat­ters per­tain­ing to the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) have been re­ferred to the po­lice.

Re­ply­ing to PNM MP Symon de No­bri­ga's query on cri­te­ria be­ing used to "ter­mi­nate, hire or re­hire" month­ly paid work­ers, Ameen said that was a false premise. She said URP was de­signed as tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment.

"We met wide­spread ab­sen­teeism; work­ers turned up at month end to sign a reg­is­ter to col­lect pay ... we found a lot of nepo­tism, crony­ism, cor­rup­tion, and fraud con­doned by the PNM. This Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to root out cor­rup­tion, save tax­pay­ers' dol­lars, and pro­vide re­al em­ploy­ment to re­al peo­ple—not 'ghosts'.

"This Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed that non-es­sen­tial staff for the wrap-up of the URP are no longer re­quired. We hired an eight-mem­ber team with pre­vi­ous man­age­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence in the pro­gramme and with back­grounds in law en­force­ment be­cause there are a lot of po­lice mat­ters—mat­ters be­ing re­ferred to the po­lice from the URP—and per­sons with busi­ness and project man­age­ment ex­per­tise were en­gaged al­so. They'll wind up the URP and im­ple­ment a new strate­gic di­rec­tion."

Ameen added, "There has been no hir­ing of ter­mi­nat­ed month­ly paid work­ers, and there will be no hir­ing or re­hir­ing of the 'ghosts' con­doned un­der the for­mer gov­ern­ment."