CARISA LEE

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh says he can­not con­firm the ex­act amount owed to his mem­bers by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). How­ev­er, he on Thurs­day urged the state en­ti­ty to pay the $1.3 bil­lion debt soon, as it’s crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of the sec­tor.

On Wednes­day, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is part­ly blamed er­rant ten­ants, who owe the HDC $151 mil­lion, for the $1 bil­lion debt owed to con­trac­tors, which HDC has been un­able to pay.

In a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ma­habirs­ingh said the de­lay in pay­ment al­so af­fects large, medi­um, small and even mi­cro con­trac­tors who have un­der­tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ex­pen­di­ture against this debt and some­times even dipped in their own pock­ets. He said pay­ment will boost the econ­o­my in many ways.

“If there is an in­jec­tion of one bil­lion dol­lars in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, (it) def­i­nite­ly cre­ates a lot of em­ploy­ment, con­ti­nu­ity, have the mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect in terms of sup­pli­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, ma­te­r­i­al man­u­fac­tur­ers and so the quick­er a so­lu­tion is re­solved, we will see some lev­el of pos­i­tive in­volve­ment in the in­dus­try,” he said.

He said the debt is sig­nif­i­cant in terms of the cur­rent in­dus­try and to pre­vent a re­oc­cur­rence, project fund­ing needs to be iden­ti­fied. He said to al­le­vi­ate some of the is­sues, agen­cies can se­cure fund­ing via loans and en­sure it is avail­able pri­or to award­ing con­tracts.

“So, when the con­struc­tion con­tract is award­ed, the con­trac­tor sub­mits the in­ter­im pay­ment, those in­ter­im pay­ment re­quire­ments or cer­tifi­cates are met,” he ex­plained.

Ma­habirs­ingh, whose as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 con­trac­tors, said the State is the largest client in this coun­try, so mem­bers re­ly on the Gov­ern­ment for em­ploy­ment al­though some con­trac­tors get work with the pri­vate sec­tor.

How­ev­er, he said such a hefty debt is not new and HDC was one of three State com­pa­nies ow­ing con­trac­tors large fees. The oth­ers are the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL).

“What I can say is that debt to con­trac­tors is an age-old prob­lem for some city agen­cies have grown ac­cus­tomed to en­joy­ing ex­tend­ed cred­it at the cost of con­trac­tors,” Ma­habirs­ingh said.

In April this year, it was re­port­ed the EF­CL owed con­trac­tors over $600 mil­lion while in Sep­tem­ber 2021, WASA re­port­ed­ly owed con­trac­tors a sim­i­lar amount.