An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Eight man­age­r­i­al-lev­el con­tracts at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) have not been re­newed, chair­man Feeroz Khan has con­firmed.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia last night, Khan stressed that these were not ar­bi­trary dis­missals, but rather fixed-term con­tracts that had reached the end of their life and were be­ing op­er­at­ed on a month-to-month ba­sis.

“This is not a case of peo­ple be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed,” Khan said. “Their con­tracts came to an end. Out of 880 per­sons em­ployed at the HDC, on­ly eight were af­fect­ed, and these were at the man­age­r­i­al lev­el.”

Khan al­so dis­missed cir­cu­lat­ing claims that HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, was among those im­pact­ed.

He clar­i­fied that Mc­Far­lane, who is­sued the for­mal let­ters on the ad­vice of the board, re­mains in her sub­stan­tive role.

How­ev­er, sources with­in the HDC told the Guardian that the de­ci­sions are linked to deep­er op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial chal­lenges fac­ing the state hous­ing agency.

“The HDC is in a very un­healthy po­si­tion,” one in­sid­er re­vealed. “Con­struc­tion method­ol­o­gy has been flawed. In­stead of com­plet­ing and de­liv­er­ing units to gen­er­ate rev­enue, too much mon­ey is tied up in work-in-progress. Right now, HDC has about 1,300 units un­der con­struc­tion, but on­ly a frac­tion are close to com­ple­tion. If 500 units had been fin­ished and hand­ed over, the Cor­po­ra­tion could col­lect mon­ey and pay its bills.”

The sources al­so point­ed to prob­lems in as­set man­age­ment, with il­le­gal oc­cu­pan­cy of HDC prop­er­ties and non-pay­ment of rent fur­ther strain­ing the cor­po­ra­tion’s fi­nances.

Equal­ly trou­bling, they said, are al­le­ga­tions of long-stand­ing abus­es in the award and main­te­nance of con­tracts.

“Some con­trac­tors have not faced com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing for years,” one source claimed, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to con­tracts held by two well-known busi­ness­men.

The source al­leged that one of the busi­ness­man’s bills to the HDC is in ex­cess of $2 mil­lion plus VAT month­ly for main­te­nance con­tracts, while the oth­er is said to bill around $600,000 plus VAT.

“These con­tracts have been like ticks suck­ing the lifeblood out of the Cor­po­ra­tion. If these costs were curbed, more staff could be re­tained and the or­gan­i­sa­tion would be health­i­er. The com­pa­ny must be fixed for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try. We can­not con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in a way that drains re­sources while peo­ple are still wait­ing for homes,” the in­sid­ers added.