Senators press Saddam Hosein on LandmarkTT concerns

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu are call­ing on Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein to di­rect­ly ad­dress mount­ing con­cerns linked to Land­mark­TT and al­le­ga­tions of nepo­tism and crony­ism.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi ac­cused Ho­sein of avoid­ing scruti­ny over the mat­ter and ques­tioned re­la­tion­ships linked to the State hous­ing ini­tia­tive.

“When is Sad­dam ex­plain­ing how his le­gal part­ner, the woman who ran in the prac­tice with him when he was there and now, her hus­band is the CEO of Land­mark, his friend, broth­er. Oh God, it’s sound­ing like bac­cha­nal as I start to say. They start to con­nect the dots,” Al-Rawi said.

He fur­ther ques­tioned the speed at which projects were al­leged­ly ap­proved and fi­nanced.

“These are not small things. A bil­lion dol­lars here in the HDC, $150 mil­lion here. Who gets fi­nanc­ing, de­sign, and abil­i­ty to ten­der in two weeks for a bil­lion-dol­lar project?” he asked.

Al-Rawi al­so dis­missed claims that no tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey was in­volved in the arrange­ment, ar­gu­ing that State lands them­selves car­ry im­mense val­ue.

“How on God’s earth can that gen­tle­man say that there’s no State mon­ey when the land has mon­ey? You take the land, you take a trun­cat­ed process of a cou­ple weeks, you in­vite a few peo­ple, some of whom now in­cor­po­rat­ed, you give it out. The land has val­ue,” he said.

He added that pri­vate in­vestors would still prof­it from the use of State re­sources.

“The odi­um is that a few peo­ple on­ly get to make prof­it us­ing State re­sources. So, I’d like to dis­abuse that dotish­ness from Sad­dam Ho­sein. He is run­ning. He is hid­ing,” Al-Rawi stat­ed.

Mean­while, Bood­hu said the min­is­ter should con­front the al­le­ga­tions di­rect­ly if there is noth­ing im­prop­er to con­ceal.

“On Tues­day morn­ing, I said right here ba­si­cal­ly that the min­is­ter should be giv­en the ben­e­fit of the doubt to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to come out and say what is his po­si­tion. Is there a nepo­tis­tic re­la­tion­ship in his ap­point­ment or not?” Bood­hu said.

He said he ini­tial­ly be­lieved there could have been a rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion, but ac­cused the min­is­ter of side­step­ping the is­sue.

“Lo and be­hold, sev­en o’clock news, when I’m watch­ing it, his po­si­tion is, let me point the fin­ger back at the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor. Why are you do­ing that?” he asked.

Bood­hu ar­gued that cit­i­zens de­served straight­for­ward an­swers in­stead of po­lit­i­cal de­flec­tion.

“Is it that you think that the peo­ple of this coun­try are so stu­pid that they’re not go­ing to know that that is a dis­trac­tion and you have not an­swered the ques­tion? Trinidad is not a so­ci­ety of fool­ish peo­ple. Come out and tell the peo­ple the truth and let us move on with the na­tion’s busi­ness,” he said.

The com­ments came one week af­ter Ho­sein de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the Land­mark­TT/Al­lam­by hous­ing de­vel­op­ment project dur­ing de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

The min­is­ter re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion claims that State lands had been trans­ferred to de­vel­op­ers at a “pep­per­corn rate” and said he was await­ing find­ings from the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor.

Ho­sein ex­plained that Cab­i­net ap­proved the es­tab­lish­ment of a State land in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship in No­vem­ber 2025 to ac­cel­er­ate res­i­den­tial hous­ing de­liv­ery. In Jan­u­ary 2026, Cab­i­net agreed to in­cor­po­rate Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd to over­see the ini­tia­tive.

Ac­cord­ing to Ho­sein, the State would make lands avail­able to pri­vate de­vel­op­ers to con­struct planned gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties aimed at mid­dle and up­per-in­come earn­ers, while re­tain­ing own­er­ship of the lands through Land­mark­TT.

“It’s ab­solute­ly un­true that lands were trans­ferred to the de­vel­op­er at ‘pep­per­corn rate.’ The cur­rent mod­el is that Land­mark­TT, be­ing the hold­ing com­pa­ny of lands, will make the lands avail­able to the de­vel­op­er but not trans­fer ti­tle of the lands to the de­vel­op­er,” Ho­sein said in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

He al­so ac­cused the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of en­gag­ing in sim­i­lar arrange­ments in­volv­ing prime State lands.