Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an­nounced a sweep­ing re­view of State prop­er­ty rentals, de­scrib­ing the near­ly half a bil­lion dol­lars spent in fis­cal 2024 on leased build­ings as “dead mon­ey” that re­flects waste­ful ex­pen­di­ture and poor over­sight of pub­lic re­sources.

“Gov­ern­men­tal rentals, this has caused bil­lions of dol­lars to be spent with­out trans­paren­cy. The to­tal spent on the last fis­cal year alone, fis­cal 2024, was 493 mil­lion dol­lars. This is like dead mon­ey be­cause it is not like you get­ting any­thing from it back.”

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so dis­closed find­ings from a Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s mas­ter list track­ing State prop­er­ty leas­es.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est fig­ures, there are cur­rent­ly 235 ac­tive leas­es but of these, 193 ex­pired.

Even more alarm­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter said, was the emer­gence of what she re­ferred to as “ghost rentals,” leas­es for prop­er­ties where there ap­peared to be lit­tle to no ev­i­dence of ac­tu­al gov­ern­ment oc­cu­pa­tion or us­age.

“The rent paid by gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies do not match the fig­ure on a mas­ter list of prop­er­ties rent­ed by gov­ern­ment, which is pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry out of Pub­lic Ad­min. Some of the prop­er­ties for which rents are paid, are be­ing paid, are not even on the mas­ter list. I don’t know if you want to call them ghost rentals, but the gov­ern­ment is pay­ing al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars a year in rentals.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­pressed deep con­cern over an un­ex­plained $208 mil­lion vari­ance in gov­ern­ment rental ex­pen­di­tures for the year 2024 and as­sert­ed that the dis­crep­an­cy be­tween record­ed rental al­lo­ca­tions and ac­tu­al pay­ments raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about over­sight and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment.

“There are vari­ances in the rent paid ver­sus rent on the mas­ter list of 21.8 mil­lion for the Ju­di­cia­ry, for ex­am­ple, 24.8 for the Min­istry of Fi­nance, 47.9 mil­lion for the Min­istry of Health, 31.4 mil­lion for TTPS, 10.6 for the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. This is just a few of them.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so took aim at land­lords col­lect­ing rent with­out prop­er ap­provals or con­tracts.

“Two com­pa­nies, GV Hold­ings and NJ Na­hous In­vest­ments LTD, were paid over 15 mil­lion in rent per year in prop­er­ties rent­ed by gov­ern­ment and re­gret­tably, there are no cur­rent leas­es. And there are oth­ers, paid over 15 mil­lion in rent per year, rent­ed by gov­ern­ment and there is no cur­rent lease and no cab­i­net ap­proval.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, rental prop­er­ties be­long­ing to rel­a­tives of for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi al­leged­ly cost tax­pay­ers $1.7 mil­lion per month.

She pro­vid­ed a fur­ther break­down of gov­ern­ment-leased prop­er­ties across the coun­try.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of the leas­es are for the fol­low­ing lo­ca­tions: costs per month, Port-of-Spain, 66 leas­es, 9.5 mil­lion. San Juan, 17 leas­es, 1.3 mil­lion. San Fer­nan­do, 1.3 mil­lion, 22 leas­es. Ch­agua­nas 0.6 mil­lion, 10 leas­es, Ari­ma 0.5 mil­lion, 11 leas­es.”

Asked whether there were grounds for a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dis­cov­ery of rental in­con­sis­ten­cies, which could be tan­ta­mount to fraud, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith in­di­cat­ed that the nec­es­sary process­es will be fol­lowed.

“At this time, we won’t prof­fer too much in­for­ma­tion as we are in the as­sess­ment phase but keep in mind as the Prime Min­is­ter would have out­lined, most min­is­ters are in of­fice about 3 weeks now and give (sic) the time to go through the prop­er process and pro­ce­dure. We are a Gov­ern­ment of trans­paren­cy and in due time all will be brought to light.”

The Prime Min­is­ter high­light­ed that with­out lease agree­ments, the Gov­ern­ment has no for­mal re­course to en­force oblig­a­tions such as build­ing main­te­nance and se­cu­ri­ty.

“No one can con­firm whether these prop­er­ties still meet the cri­te­ria for rental or req­ui­site ap­provals for fire, health and safe­ty and oth­er ar­eas of con­cern.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that the most ex­pen­sive rental per square foot was in Port-of-Spain and re­it­er­at­ed the need to de­cen­tralise. She said Gov­ern­ment has to find ways of cost-cut­ting” and that they planned to rene­go­ti­ate down­wards the prices of rentals with land­lords and make moves to ac­quire its own prop­er­ties.