SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) is con­sid­er­ing sell­ing or leas­ing its sev­en malls across Trinidad af­ter rack­ing up more than $3.1 mil­lion in un­paid rent.

HDC’s chair­man Feeroz Khan, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last Fri­day, said the cor­po­ra­tion spends $10 mil­lion a year in main­te­nance fees to up­keep and safe­guard the malls, but HDC on­ly re­ceives an in­come of $1 mil­lion from its ten­ants in rent. The ten­ants’ month­ly rents range be­tween $1,000 and $2,100. These malls have over 100 ten­ants.

Khan said it was a case of the can­dle cost­ing more than the fu­ner­al.

The main­te­nance fees in­clude grass cut­ting, jan­i­to­r­i­al and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and garbage col­lec­tion. HDC al­so pays the wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty bills.

“We have been left in a sit­u­a­tion where we have more bills than we can pay. HDC is haem­or­rhag­ing. It is in a com­plete mess.”

Khan said that un­der his chair­man­ship, tough de­ci­sions are be­ing made to stream­line HDC’s ef­fi­cien­cy, cut waste, and gen­er­ate fund­ing.

The malls are lo­cat­ed in Bon Air, Mal­oney, Pleas­antville, Ed­in­burgh 500, Cou­va Plaza, La Hor­quet­ta, and Cashew Gar­dens.

“So we have to make a strate­gic de­ci­sion as to what to do. We ei­ther sell these or lease them to some­body who will pay the rent and then man­age the ten­ants,” Khan said.

He said HDC al­so had to pay for wa­ter to be de­liv­ered to a laun­dry busi­ness in one of the malls when WASA’s sched­ule is locked off.

“HDC nev­er saw fit to ad­dress these things. So it falls to me to deal with these mat­ters. We can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue to pay $10 mil­lion a year and col­lect $1 mil­lion in rent. We can’t con­tin­ue to run them (malls). We have to look at al­ter­na­tive us­es for them.”

Khan said HDC will eval­u­ate the malls “to de­ter­mine the best way for­ward.”

Af­ter this is done, the cor­po­ra­tion will in­vite pro­pos­als from peo­ple.

These malls are un­der 20 years old.

Of the eight booths in Cashew Gar­dens, Khan said on­ly three are oc­cu­pied.

Mal­oney has 64 booths, but there are on­ly 23 ten­ants. 29 of the 35 booths in Bon Air are filled.

Asked if HDC has tak­en ac­tion to evict the delin­quent ten­ants for non­pay­ment, Khan said HDC would have to make those de­ci­sions soon.

“We will go to court to seek to re­cov­er the monies. I don’t know how suc­cess­ful we will be, but we will pur­sue it. How­ev­er, we cer­tain­ly can­not like this,” Khan said.

Rent owed

Giv­ing a break­down of the fig­ures owed in rent, Khan said Pleas­antville was over $700,000, Cou­va Plaza’s bill was al­most $1 mil­lion, Bon Air $506,000, La Hor­quet­ta $300,000, Mal­oney had crossed $500,000, Ed­in­burgh was in ex­cess of $200,000, while Cashew Gar­dens had the least with $25,000.

“It’s not a pret­ty pic­ture.”

Khan said a ten­ant whose month­ly rent is $1,000 had owed HDC $143,000.

“That is 12 years you have not paid your rent. An­oth­er ten­ant in the same mall was in ar­rears of $120,000, and their rent is $1,000 a month.”

A third ten­ant, whose rent is $2,100, had an out­stand­ing bill of $103,000.

“For four years, this ten­ant has not paid HDC rent,” he added.