Gail Alexan­der

Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man New­man George has de­nied that he vi­o­lat­ed any pol­i­cy in deal­ing with cor­re­spon­dence from for­mer MP Jack Warn­er con­cern­ing hous­ing re­quests for sev­er­al peo­ple.

George has al­so de­nied that he had any ul­te­ri­or mo­tive con­cern­ing Warn­er in the mat­ter.

George com­ment­ed on the is­sue last Fri­day fol­low­ing so­cial me­dia air­ing of the cor­re­spon­dence which Warn­er sent to him in April ask­ing for help for peo­ple who need HDC homes and George's sub­se­quent re­ply.

Ac­cord­ing to the email, George passed the in­for­ma­tion from Warn­er to act­ing HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Brent Lyons, stat­ing: "Can you please put this in train and let me no­ti­fy Mr Warn­er as we may need him in the fu­ture for as­sis­tance..."

Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal on Thurs­day said a re­quest will be made to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to probe the mat­ter since George "vi­o­lat­ed" the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life law.

"....The sit­u­a­tion speaks of al­leged cor­rup­tion in the hous­ing sec­tor, politi­ci­sa­tion and breach of law. I ex­pect Mr George to clar­i­fy this mat­ter soon­est in the pub­lic in­ter­est–and what did he mean that they may 'need' Warn­er in fu­ture for 'as­sis­tance'?" Mooni­lal added.

The is­sue

The is­sue in­volves an April 5, 2016, cor­re­spon­dence from George to HDC act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons on the sub­ject of "HDC re­quests."

En­closed was an April 4, 2016, cor­re­spon­dence from Warn­er with the sub­ject al­so be­ing "HDC re­quests," plus a list of peo­ple.

Warn­er's cor­re­spon­dence stat­ed, "Chair­man, I do here­by send to you the at­tached list as re­quest­ed. The for­mer Min­is­ter did agree to the im­me­di­ate al­lo­ca­tion of the un­der­men­tioned per­sons as num­bered in the list."

The "un­der­men­tioned" were names of two men and two women.

Warn­er's let­ter al­so stat­ed "Your for­mer Min­is­ter" had ad­vised Warn­er of a per­son "of your Min­istry" who would ad­vise ap­pli­cants on their ap­provals.

Warn­er added, "Chair­man, I shall be eter­nal­ly grate­ful if you can use your good of­fice to as­sist."

Warn­er's let­ter al­so stat­ed that an­oth­er per­son had ad­vised there were two hous­es in Green­vale which have "been un­oc­cu­pied for an in­con­sid­er­able length of time." He gave three ad­dress­es.

Warn­er al­so stat­ed, "Fi­nal­ly, there are some po­lice of­fi­cers who are al­so in dire need of hous­ing, but this shall form the ba­sis of a sep­a­rate ad­vice."

The cor­re­spon­dence from George to Lyons in which Warn­er's cor­re­spon­dence was en­closed stat­ed, "Can you please put this in train and let me no­ti­fy Mr Warn­er as we may need him in the fu­ture for as­sis­tance, thanks."

Con­tact­ed, George said, "Since I be­came chair­man, I've re­ceived much com­mu­ni­ca­tion– texts, What­sApp, cor­re­spon­dence–from peo­ple from all over. I try my best to re­spond to all. Some want hous­es–I in­vite them to come in and ap­ply.

"In in­stances where peo­ple have ref­er­ence num­bers I re­fer cor­re­spon­dence to the act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor–I don't deal with it. As I un­der­stand the stan­dard prac­tice, the mat­ter is re­ferred to al­lo­ca­tion staff. I send it to the act­ing MD and he for­wards it to them. They will like­ly call peo­ple with ref­er­ence num­bers.

"In the case of Warn­er's let­ter, he made rep­re­sen­ta­tion for sev­er­al peo­ple and he had num­bers. All I did was send this on to the act­ing MD to fol­low the process. I'm an hon­est, straight­for­ward per­son. I nev­er said to the act­ing MD to give this re­quest any pref­er­ence. I can on­ly fa­cil­i­tate the process. I haven't told any­one to al­low any­body to jump the line."

?George said he knew that on­ly the min­is­ter can make a rec­om­men­da­tion, and not he.

"What I did was sim­ply fa­cil­i­tate the pass­ing on of in­for­ma­tion to staff–I made no rec­om­men­da­tion. I can­not al­lo­cate any house. Al­lo­ca­tions di­vi­sion in­volves the staff which in­ter­views peo­ple and does case analy­sis."

George was asked what he meant–or in­tend­ed–from the line in his mail to Lyons on Warn­er's let­ter, "Can you please put this in train and let me no­ti­fy Mr Warn­er as we may need him in the fu­ture for as­sis­tance, thanks." He replied, "I meant noth­ing at all sin­is­ter–be as­sured of that....why I wrote it?....it doesn't sig­ni­fy any plan or in­ten­tion. I had no ul­te­ri­or mo­tive or agen­da."

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the line sound­ed as though it im­plied "some­thing," he said: "Mr Warn­er, like oth­er past MPs and heads of var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions who've asked for as­sis­tance on be­half of cit­i­zens, are con­sid­ered 'use­ful' on­ly in so far as a link to or ad­vo­cate for a large num­ber of peo­ple with­in their com­mu­ni­ties.

"Any ref­er­ence to the past MP and his 'use­ful­ness' is on­ly in that gen­er­al con­text and noth­ing more. I cer­tain­ly didn't mean it in the way some might in­ter­pret...I'm not in pol­i­tics, I'm a re­tired civ­il en­gi­neer."

Mooni­lal: I'm shocked

Mooni­lal, mean­while, said: "I'm shocked at the scan­dalous rev­e­la­tion of this cor­re­spon­dence as it speaks to po­lit­i­cal and le­gal wrong­do­ing. I call on the Hous­ing Min­is­ter to clar­i­fy whether he's a part of such a breach of pol­i­cy and the law.

"Cab­i­net Note 2730 (Sep­tem­ber 25, 2005) states pol­i­cy on how homes are dis­trib­uted–a per­cent­age to pro­tec­tive of­fi­cers, pub­lic of­fi­cers, dif­fer­ent­ly abled and the min­is­ter has dis­cre­tion to rec­om­mend.

"There's es­tab­lished cab­i­net pol­i­cy on al­lo­ca­tion and where the min­is­ter makes rec­om­men­da­tions–not the HDC chair­man."

Mooni­lal said: "The HDC chair­man can't rec­om­mend peo­ple for hous­ing. He's there to im­ple­ment and di­rect gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. If the for­mer (PP) board chair­man (Ra­bindra Moo­nan) made rec­om­men­da­tion, it still had to be ap­proved by the min­is­ter. The for­mer chair­man couldn't di­rect (the then HDC MD) to do any­thing. George is a per­son in pub­lic life gov­erned by the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. So this is a vi­o­la­tion of that act and abuse of pub­lic of­fice.

"The PNM ac­cused us of giv­ing hous­es to the po­lice and me­dia when we did it in line with pol­i­cy, but here's the HDC chair­man telling the act­ing HDC MD that (Warn­er) 'may be of as­sis­tance in fu­ture.' This is bold­faced, un­eth­i­cal, il­le­gal and demon­strates the politi­ci­sa­tion of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of hous­es. I ask the chair­man: what as­sis­tance is he ex­pect­ing to need from Warn­er in fu­ture?

"He must say what as­sis­tance of Mr Warn­er will he or his ad­min­is­tra­tion be in need of," Mooni­lal said, not­ing George was the as­sis­tant cam­paign man­ag­er of Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley's Diego Mar­tin West unit in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

I get re­quests from all types of peo­ple–Hous­ing Min­is­ter

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said, "I wasn't par­ty to the al­leged cor­re­spon­dence, there­fore I can­not com­ment/spec­u­late on what could be meant by the line ..."we may need him...." You'd per­haps need to speak to Mr George.

"But on a dai­ly ba­sis I'd re­ceive hun­dreds of re­quests and en­treaties from all types of per­sons. From min­is­ters, from for­mer min­is­ters, from for­mer, for­mer min­is­ters, from Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, the Op­po­si­tion Leader, re­li­gious lead­ers, coun­cil­lors, chair­men, and mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. As HDC chair­man, I'm sure Mr George would re­ceive twice as many re­quests as I would. But no mat­ter who rec­om­mends or the rec­om­men­da­tions made, they're all sub­ject to the rig­or­ous al­lo­ca­tions process."

Warn­er: It's a non-is­sue, many come to me for help

Warn­er said ap­proach­ing the PNM Gov­ern­ment for help was a "non-is­sue" and he'd sim­ply re­ferred the is­sue to George as a "mat­ter of course" since many come to him for help.

"There's noth­ing wrong with my re­quest–I'd got­ten 380 hous­es from (Roodal) Mooni­lal."

Warn­er said he'd sent the re­quest "off the bat." He de­nied he was help­ing the PNM in any way, would be, or an­tic­i­pat­ed any help from them.

"I'm out of pol­i­tics–Jack Warn­er, pri­vate cit­i­zen..."

Pressed on deal­ings with George, how well he knew George and specifics of the con­ver­sa­tion with him on the mat­ter, Warn­er de­clined com­ment.?

'NOTH­ING SIN­IS­TER'

Queried on the process, George said: "The re­quests HDC gets from the pub­lic have in­clud­ed from past and present MPs, min­is­ters, cur­rent Op­po­si­tion MPs, Op­po­si­tion held cor­po­ra­tion mem­bers and pro­tec­tive ser­vices."

In­for­ma­tion showed re­quests came to George from the fol­low­ing per­sons this year:

�2 April 27–Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe (Fyz­abad MP)

�2 May 10 & 16–Coun­cil­lor Alif Mo­hammed (Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion)

�2 May 13 & 19–Aik­nath Singh (chair­man Princes Town Re­gion­al Corp)

�2 May 24–Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion

�2 March 22–Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer T&T Coast Guard

�2 March 18–Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons

�2 April 12–Ag Chief of De­fence Staff

Re­quests copied to HDC's chair­man (in­clud­ing the first two be­fore George was ap­point­ed) and sent to the min­is­ter:

�2 No­vem­ber 17, 2015–Ra­mona Ram­di­al (Cou­va North MP)

�2 Oc­to­ber 6, 2015–Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar (Op­po­si­tion Leader)

�2 May 23, Feb 24 & Feb 2–Rudranath In­dars­ingh (Cou­va South MP)

Fol­low­ing were sent to the

min­is­ter and for­ward­ed to George:

�2 May 19–Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan (Tabaquite MP)

�2 April 22–Dr David Lee (Pointe-a-Pierre MP)

�2 April 12–Ra­mona Ram­di­al (Cou­va North MP)

�2 April 15–Bar­ry Padarath (Princes Town MP) re­quest for ten peo­ple

�2 April 29–Rush­ton Paray (Ma­yaro MP)

�2 April 12–Tran­sit Po­lice Unit

Fol­low­ing were sent to act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, but for­ward­ed to George:

�2 May 17 & 24–Dr Roodal Mooni­lal (Oropouche East MP)

�2 May 3–Fazal Karim (Ch­agua­nas East MP) re­quest for 32 peo­ple

�2 March 11–Rod­ney Charles (Na­pari­ma MP)

�2 Feb­ru­ary 17–Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie (Ca­roni Cen­tral MP) re­quest for six peo­ple

George said: "From the fore­go­ing, one can see that re­quests for hous­ing come from all and sundry, with ex­pec­ta­tion that the chair­man can as­sist."