An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) will dis­con­tin­ue its two sub­sidiaries, Fa­cil­i­ties Es­tate Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (FEM­CoL) and As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (AMC), ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 1.

HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan con­firmed that the move to bring the sub­sidiaries’ func­tions back un­der the main cor­po­ra­tion stems from a “failed struc­tur­al ex­per­i­ment”.

Work­ers told Guardian Me­dia that HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane met with staff yes­ter­day to of­fi­cial­ly com­mu­ni­cate the clo­sure time­line. FEM­CoL em­ploy­ees were ad­dressed via Zoom, while AMC staff at­tend­ed an in-per­son brief­ing.

Mc­Far­lane said the de­ci­sion was made by the board of di­rec­tors to stream­line op­er­a­tions, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, and en­sure that the HDC main­tains suf­fi­cient rev­enue to meet its debt oblig­a­tions.

“The ob­jec­tive is to elim­i­nate un­nec­es­sary ar­rears and en­force stronger ac­count­abil­i­ty across all de­part­ments, en­sur­ing due process in fi­nan­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ters,” she ex­plained.

When pressed about the tran­si­tion, Mc­Far­lane not­ed she was not di­rect­ly in­volved in the re­struc­tur­ing, which is be­ing man­aged by the deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and the board. She could not con­firm which em­ploy­ees from FEM­CoL or AMC would be re­tained or ab­sorbed in­to the HDC.

One work­er said most AMC staff are on con­tracts set to ex­pire at the end of No­vem­ber, one month af­ter the sub­sidiaries’ of­fi­cial dis­con­tin­u­a­tion date. Mc­Far­lane re­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed that staff would be up­dat­ed once guid­ance is pro­vid­ed on how these con­tracts will be han­dled if re­struc­tur­ing is in­com­plete by then.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the first draft of the HDC’s new or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture is ex­pect­ed by the end of this month, but for­mal let­ters of ter­mi­na­tion or re­as­sign­ment have not yet been is­sued. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 em­ploy­ees across both sub­sidiaries are cur­rent­ly await­ing of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence.

An em­ploy­ee who at­tend­ed Mon­day’s meet­ing said staff were in­formed the de­ci­sion is part of broad­er fi­nan­cial re­forms aimed at keep­ing the HDC with­in its means and pre­vent­ing fur­ther debt ac­cu­mu­la­tion.

Khan ex­plained that the sub­sidiaries, orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed to man­age main­te­nance and equip­ment func­tions sep­a­rate­ly from the HDC, ul­ti­mate­ly led to frag­men­ta­tion and in­ef­fi­cien­cy.

“The com­pa­nies were split a cou­ple of years ago, and the split has failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly,” he said. “AMC and FEM­CoL cre­at­ed prob­lems with the cul­ture. Peo­ple didn’t feel they need­ed to re­port to the HDC, even though they couldn’t ex­ist with­out it.”

He added that rein­te­gra­tion will sim­pli­fy the HDC’s or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­sign, re­move lay­ers of bu­reau­cra­cy, and re­store uni­fied over­sight. While the board’s pri­ma­ry aim is to ra­tio­nalise the struc­ture, no fi­nal de­ci­sion has been made re­gard­ing po­ten­tial re­trench­ments.

“The first call will be to try and ab­sorb every­body,” Khan said.

Ac­cord­ing to the HDC web­site, FEM­CoL man­ages all el­e­ments of the cor­po­ra­tion’s prop­er­ty, in­clud­ing the main­te­nance of rental hous­ing units, ad­min­is­tra­tion of the man­age­ment com­pa­ny port­fo­lio, and part­ner­ships with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and oth­er en­ti­ties to pro­mote sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment. AMC is re­spon­si­ble for com­plet­ing the sale of hous­ing units and pro­vid­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port for hous­ing de­vel­op­ments un­til han­dover to pur­chasers.