Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing con­struc­tion da­ta since April 28, 2025, show that while build­ing ac­tiv­i­ty has con­tin­ued across sev­er­al Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion sites, rel­a­tive­ly few new con­struc­tion con­tracts were award­ed last year, with much of the record­ed work fo­cused on com­plet­ing long-run­ning projects.

Ac­cord­ing to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­sponse pro­vid­ed by the HDC, since April 28, 2025, five con­tracts were is­sued for on­go­ing con­struc­tion, re­fur­bish­ment or main­te­nance. A sig­nif­i­cant share of that work re­lates to the com­ple­tion of the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers in Ch­agua­nas rather than the start of new hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

Three of the five con­tracts award­ed dur­ing this pe­ri­od are tied to the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers West Block. Be­tween June and Au­gust 2025, sep­a­rate con­tracts were is­sued for con­struc­tion ser­vices on the sev­enth, eighth and ninth floors of the build­ing. All three were award­ed to Halky­on Gen­er­al Con­tract­ing Lim­it­ed.

The first con­tract was award­ed on June 5, 2025, for the build-out of the ninth floor, at a val­ue of $2,963,013.75. It is list­ed as on­go­ing, with $1,455,705.10 paid to date. Two fur­ther con­tracts were award­ed on Au­gust 22, 2025, one for the sev­enth floor and one for the eighth floor, each val­ued at $2,550,560.63. Both re­main on­go­ing, with $255,056.06 paid on each.

To­geth­er, the three Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers con­tracts shown in the ta­ble amount to $8,064,134.01 and re­main works in progress.

The re­port al­so shows one com­plet­ed, non-tow­er project dur­ing the same pe­ri­od. On Au­gust 6, 2025, a con­tract val­ued at $511,474.50 was award­ed to Shaz­a­ed Mo­hammed Con­struc­tion Ltd for the con­struc­tion of a sin­gle three-bed­room fam­i­ly unit at SMC1 Lot 448, Hol­ly Be­taudi­er, Ari­ma. That con­tract is list­ed as com­plet­ed, with no pay­ments record­ed.

While the con­tract da­ta re­flects a lim­it­ed num­ber of new awards, it does not in­di­cate an ab­sence of con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty since the change of gov­ern­ment.

On May 26, 2025, HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Dr David Lee and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Phillip Alexan­der, vis­it­ed hous­ing de­vel­op­ments at Pineap­ple Smith in Mau­si­ca, Tre­strail in D’Abadie and Ridgeview Heights in Bon Air.

A FOIA re­sponse from the HDC shows that 122 hous­es were qui­et­ly hand­ed over to mem­bers of the pub­lic be­tween April 28, 2025 and No­vem­ber 21, 2025.

The bulk of those homes were dis­trib­uted in de­vel­op­ment at Cy­press Hills in San Fer­nan­do and Oa­sis Greens in Ch­agua­nas. Oth­er homes were dis­trib­uted at Ridgeview Heights (Arou­ca), Cashew Gar­dens (Ch­agua­nas), Orop­une Gar­dens (Pi­ar­co), Eden Gar­dens (Freeport), Re­al Spring (Val­sayn) Trou Macaque (Laven­tille), Gomez Trace (Moru­ga), Point Fortin, Carlsen Field and Tarou­ba.

In the weeks lead­ing up to the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, then min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Adri­an Leonce an­nounced, in a so­cial me­dia post, that the HDC had been man­dat­ed to com­plete all stalled projects. He said Oa­sis Greens in Ch­agua­nas, Re­al Springs in Val­sayn, and sev­er­al oth­ers in Carlsen Field were ei­ther com­plet­ed or were be­ing com­plet­ed in phas­es.

Leonce not­ed that con­struc­tion on the Ed­in­burgh Tow­ers be­gan in 2006, halt­ed in 2011 and re­sumed in 2021. The com­plet­ed tow­er was ex­pect­ed to house its first ten­ants by ear­ly April, with 70 units avail­able im­me­di­ate­ly and an­oth­er 70 up­on com­ple­tion of the sec­ond tow­er lat­er in the year.

He re­port­ed that ten projects had al­ready been com­plet­ed, in­clud­ing Oa­sis Greens in Ch­agua­nas, Re­al Springs in Val­sayn, and sev­er­al de­vel­op­ments at Carlsen Field, which he said were be­ing com­plet­ed in phas­es.

With the change of gov­ern­ment on April 28, 2025, the con­struc­tion con­tracts award­ed af­ter that date are large­ly list­ed as on­go­ing and fo­cused on com­plet­ing ex­ist­ing struc­tures.

Many of the homes hand­ed over since the elec­tion were drawn from de­vel­op­ments that were al­ready sub­stan­tial­ly ad­vanced un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, rather than from projects ini­ti­at­ed un­der the new Gov­ern­ment.