DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young is call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) af­ter the dis­clo­sure of a $3.4 bil­lion list of hous­ing con­tracts he de­scribes as a “car­tel-type” abuse of pub­lic funds.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion’s week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Young al­leged that the state hous­ing au­thor­i­ty used se­lec­tive ten­der­ing to by­pass trans­paren­cy and di­rect con­tracts to a hand-picked group of con­trac­tors.

Se­lec­tive ten­der­ing in­volves invit­ing bids from a pre-ap­proved list rather than through open pub­lic com­pe­ti­tion.

“It is a car­tel-type be­hav­iour that is be­fore the courts in EM­BD, and that took place at EF­CL in that 2010 to 2015 pe­ri­od,” Young said.

He ar­gued that the process was ma­nip­u­lat­ed to pre­de­ter­mine out­comes.

“Yes, they say that they were in ful­fil­ment of the pro­cure­ment laws. Not true! Be­cause the way bid rig­ging works is if five of us are cho­sen, be­cause that is what it was. It was se­lec­tive ten­der­ing. It was not open ten­der­ing. So you se­lect five peo­ple, know­ing that you want to give it to one of the five, know­ing that the oth­er four are not com­pe­tent to get the con­tract, and you end up giv­ing it to the per­son that you want­ed to give it to. And that is what is go­ing on.”

The dis­clo­sure out­lines a hi­er­ar­chy of awards, with Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd re­ceiv­ing $1 bil­lion. Oth­er ma­jor al­lo­ca­tions in­clude $446 mil­lion to Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­co Com­pa­ny Ltd, $410.3 mil­lion to Hakim Ho­sein Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd, and $290 mil­lion to Trinidad Pro Con­struc­tion Ltd.

Young al­so al­leged po­lit­i­cal links, claim­ing one of the com­pa­nies is con­nect­ed to the Gov­ern­ment as well as the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

“We in the PNM are call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this pro­cure­ment process. We are al­so go­ing to be chal­leng­ing the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and look­ing at the le­gal­i­ty of this be­cause se­lec­tive ten­der­ing is not to be abused. You can’t say, ‘well, I’m se­lect­ing four per­sons who are not qual­i­fied’ to give it to the fifth who is.”

He ques­tioned the ca­pac­i­ty of sev­er­al con­trac­tors, say­ing some have no track record in res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion or were in­cor­po­rat­ed as re­cent­ly as this year.

“A bil­lion dol­lars where you’re not even pay­ing the nurs­es, you’re not pay­ing pub­lic ser­vants on time? You find $3.4 bil­lion to give out in this man­ner?” he asked.

“Was the cab­i­net in­formed? And fur­ther­more, did the cab­i­net ap­prove $3.4 bil­lion? Are they gonna say, well, the cab­i­net doesn’t get in­volved be­cause it’s un­der pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion? Rub­bish. Where’s the HDC get­ting the $3.4 bil­lion? Who is it that de­cid­ed this? Were the min­is­ters in­volved? Or is it the chair­man and the act­ing CEO? Be­cause many of these com­pa­nies, and I chal­lenge the me­dia to go and search it, have nev­er built a home be­fore,” he said.

Young said the Op­po­si­tion is not against small con­trac­tors re­ceiv­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, but ar­gued that the cur­rent ap­proach risks wast­ing pub­lic funds.

He al­so point­ed to oth­er ma­jor projects—in­clud­ing works at the Debe cam­pus, port ex­pan­sion, de­vel­op­ments in To­ba­go and elec­tric ve­hi­cle pro­cure­ment—as ar­eas re­quir­ing scruti­ny.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor. An of­fi­cial ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt but did not pro­vide a re­sponse up to pub­li­ca­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee al­so did not re­spond to calls and mes­sages. How­ev­er, speak­ing out­side the Sen­ate on Tues­day, Min­is­ter in the Hous­ing Min­istry Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der de­fend­ed the process, say­ing it was con­duct­ed in keep­ing with the rule of law.

Mean­while, at­tempts to ob­tain com­ment from TTPS of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, were un­suc­cess­ful.