Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide an up­date fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing con­vened to dis­cuss the can­cel­la­tion of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s $3.4 bil­lion De­sign-Build-Fi­nance (DBF) hous­ing pro­cure­ment pro­gramme.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia ear­ly yes­ter­day, Lee con­firmed that dis­cus­sions with the HDC board were card­ed for lat­er in the day, in the wake of grow­ing pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal scruti­ny sur­round­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of the pro­cure­ment process.

“I am hav­ing an emer­gency meet­ing with the HDC board. Af­ter this meet­ing, I would make a state­ment,” Lee said.

The meet­ing came less than a week af­ter the HDC is­sued an of­fi­cial No­tice of Can­cel­la­tion on June 17, ter­mi­nat­ing pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings for its “Port­fo­lio 1” hous­ing project with im­me­di­ate ef­fect un­der Sec­tion 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

In the no­tice, the HDC stat­ed that it had de­ter­mined that dis­con­tin­u­ing the ex­er­cise was in the “pub­lic in­ter­est.”

The now-scrapped pro­gramme formed part of a ma­jor hous­ing ini­tia­tive in­tend­ed to de­liv­er thou­sands of homes through a De­sign-Build-Fi­nance mod­el, with an es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of $3.4 bil­lion.

The pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise had at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion due to its scale and its role in help­ing ad­dress the coun­try’s grow­ing hous­ing de­mand.

In April, the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor halt­ed the award of $3.4 bil­lion in HDC con­tracts to 11 com­pa­nies, just hours af­ter a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter de­fend­ed the process.

The reg­u­la­tor’s chair­man, Bev­er­ly Khan, had is­sued a state­ment re­veal­ing that the de­ci­sion was ac­tu­al­ly tak­en a day af­ter the mat­ter was first raised by for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings.

Khan had said the en­quiry is aimed at en­sur­ing full com­pli­ance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act. Khan at the time de­clined fur­ther com­ment on the mat­ter.

Last week’s an­nounce­ment of the can­cel­la­tion has since sparked a po­lit­i­cal firestorm, with Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les call­ing for the im­me­di­ate dis­missal of the HDC board and the Gov­ern­ment’s hous­ing min­is­ters.

In a state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion, Beck­les ar­gued that the de­ci­sion amount­ed to an ad­mis­sion that the pro­cure­ment process was flawed and should nev­er have pro­gressed as far as it did.

She ques­tioned how a project of such mag­ni­tude could have ad­vanced through mul­ti­ple stages be­fore be­ing abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, how­ev­er, have main­tained that the de­ci­sion was tak­en to avoid pro­longed dis­putes and de­lays that could have fur­ther post­poned the de­liv­ery of hous­ing to cit­i­zens.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der pre­vi­ous­ly said the Gov­ern­ment chose to halt the process en­tire­ly rather than al­low it to be­come en­tan­gled in chal­lenges that could have de­layed con­struc­tion and hous­ing de­liv­ery for years.

The Op­po­si­tion has con­tin­ued to de­mand an­swers re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances that led to the can­cel­la­tion, the amount of pub­lic re­sources spent on the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise, and whether any of­fi­cials will be held ac­count­able.