Akash Sama­roo

Some con­trac­tors are vow­ing to nev­er work for the state again, as they are owed mil­lions of dol­lars from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

But the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing is apol­o­gis­ing for the in­con­ve­nience, as the HDC is pledg­ing to cre­ate a pay­ment plan for them in May.

The con­trac­tors were se­lect­ed un­der the HDC’s Small and Medi­um Con­trac­tors Hous­ing Ini­tia­tive (SM­CI). Launched in 2020, the ini­tia­tive’s pur­pose was twofold - to part­ner with the pri­vate sec­tor to ad­dress the de­mand of pub­lic hous­ing while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and cre­at­ing jobs. This was to en­sure that big con­trac­tors do not dom­i­nate the in­dus­try.

The con­trac­tors, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, did so un­der anonymi­ty, as they said in their in­dus­try, those who go pub­lic are black­list­ed from fu­ture projects.

They ex­plained that the HDC was sup­posed to pay them in phas­es de­pend­ing on the pro­gres­sion of work. At dif­fer­ent stages in the de­vel­op­ment, they said the HDC would send of­fi­cials to val­i­date the work and to process a pay­ment no longer than one month af­ter the site vis­it.

One con­trac­tor said that the sys­tem worked once.

“I would say the on­ly time we were paid on time was the first cheque that we got and then af­ter that, it’s every four or some­times five months,” the con­trac­tor said

The con­trac­tors say that means they have to in­vest their own mon­ey at times to com­plete a unit. An­oth­er con­trac­tor said the HDC now owes him over $1.3 mil­lion. He said af­ter 17 years in the busi­ness, he’s had to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend op­er­a­tions.

“I fac­ing bank­rupt­cy right now and I have chil­dren to send to school. Right now, I have to let go every­body who is work­ing for me, when­ev­er they (HDC) de­cide to pay me, then I will see who is avail­able and re­hire.”

One con­trac­tor, who said he is owed $700,000, said he will no longer work with the State even if he is paid in full.

“This def­i­nite­ly turned me off. I had to bor­row mon­ey out­side of the bank to get mon­ey to pay the bank, that’s how bad things are.”

The con­trac­tor said be­cause he owes the bank a lot of mon­ey, he was un­able to grow his busi­ness or in­vest in his pri­vate ven­tures.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who apol­o­gised to the con­trac­tors for an “un­in­ten­tion­al de­lay in pay­ments.”

How­ev­er, she said of the 105 small con­trac­tors do­ing work for the HDC, there is a lim­it­ed num­ber who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing non-pay­ment. The HDC ad­mit­ted that it is hav­ing is­sues with rev­enue and the min­is­ter said there may be a so­lu­tion.

“The HDC is at present work­ing on sell­ing units. The pro­ceeds from these sales are to be ap­plied to the pay­ments to the SM­CI con­trac­tors,” Robin­son-Reg­is said via text mes­sage.

The min­is­ter said the chal­lenges of COVID-19 had re­sult­ed in in­creased costs and time over­runs aris­ing from vari­a­tions in scope and in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues. That led to de­lays in clos­ing mort­gages due to the de­lays in com­ple­tion, she not­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is said an­oth­er ma­jor cause for the de­lay in pay­ments was in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues at some of the work­sites, which led to con­tract vari­a­tions. She said this speaks to a lack of over­sight and she has man­dat­ed a re­view of the sys­tem.

Mean­while, the HDC said it will be reach­ing out to the af­fect­ed con­trac­tors with­in the next month to struc­ture a suit­able pay­ment plan in or­der to avoid fu­ture in­con­ve­niences.