ASHA JAVEED and

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

One month af­ter Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed was in­cor­po­rat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2026, it spent $347,750 to lease a ve­hi­cle from D&D Au­to World for a three-year pe­ri­od.

On the same day, March 16, 2026, it spent $22,551 on sta­tionery for its staff.

Its first ma­jor con­tract was award­ed on April 17 to Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing Lim­it­ed, a $129.2 mil­lion con­tract for the pro­vi­sion of de­sign-build-fi­nance ser­vices for the con­struc­tion of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes and du­plex­es at the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment, Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

This was list­ed on the com­pa­ny’s web­site, along with a con­tract to build an in­ter­ac­tive por­tal for Ex­cel Glob­al So­lu­tions.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) was in­ves­ti­gat­ing Land­mark­TT’s han­dling of the pro­cure­ment process fol­low­ing a com­plaint lodged on April 18 by for­mer min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell.

Land­mark­TT’s line min­is­ter, Sad­dam Ho­sein, said last Fri­day that a se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment method was utilised for the se­lec­tion of the de­vel­op­ers, all of whom were al­ready reg­is­tered on the OPR’s de­pos­i­to­ry as con­trac­tors in that line of busi­ness.

“And the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­er in [the case of the Al­lam­by site] was Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd. This was not a sin­gle-source se­lec­tion.

“I am fur­ther ad­vised that the OPR did not halt the works at that site,” Ho­sein said in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment.

The min­is­ter fur­ther not­ed that Land­mark­TT was co­op­er­at­ing with the OPR and said he want­ed to set the record straight, “that none of my fam­i­ly mem­bers have re­ceived any Gov­ern­ment con­tracts.”

How­ev­er, Ho­sein did not ad­dress con­cerns, even with fol­low-up ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk yes­ter­day, that his friends and close as­so­ciates had ben­e­fit­ed from his of­fice.

On April 11, 2022, Saman­tha Han­sra­jie Singh-Poona in­cor­po­rat­ed Sad­dam Ho­sein and Co Lim­it­ed, where the two di­rec­tors are Ho­sein and her­self. Saman­tha Singh is the deputy chair of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

Her hus­band, Nis­chall Shane Poona, was hired as Land­mark­TT’s chief ex­ec­u­tive af­ter it was es­tab­lished.

For most of his ca­reer, Shane Poona has been an IT pro­fes­sion­al with pre­vi­ous stints at ANSA McAL and Dig­i­cel, and had sev­er­al com­pa­nies with his wife, Saman­tha. How­ev­er, on­ly their con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, Nis­po Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, re­mains ac­tive. Shane Poona is al­so the deputy chair of IGovTT.

The broth­er of Ho­sein’s per­son­al ad­vi­sor, Jerome Jag­ger­nauth, was al­so hired at Land­mark­TT.

Ho­sein was asked to com­ment on the hir­ing process at Land­mark and the po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tions for his over­sight of the Gov­ern­ment’s land bank, but he did not re­spond to mes­sages yes­ter­day, nor did Shane Poona.

With Land­mark­TT on­ly es­tab­lished three months ago and ma­jor ques­tions al­ready sur­round­ing its first pro­cure­ment with­in its sec­ond month of op­er­a­tions, char­tered sur­vey­or and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ray­mond and Pierre Ltd, Afra Ray­mond, is con­cerned about pub­lic of­fi­cials ad­her­ing to the le­gal re­quire­ments of their of­fices.

He not­ed that un­der the OPR rules, Land­mark­TT was re­quired to pub­lish its con­tract award but re­port­ed­ly did not do so un­til af­ter the OPR made the re­quest.

“Was it that the pub­lic of­fi­cials knew of the le­gal re­quire­ment and just ig­nored it, or was it that those of­fi­cials were sim­ply un­aware of that re­quire­ment? More to the point, which of those al­ter­na­tives is worse? So why can’t this con­tract be pub­lished now?’ Ray­mond asked.

He fur­ther ques­tioned, “What is the area and val­ue of the State lands com­mit­ted to this project?” Al­so, “If no pub­lic mon­ey is be­ing com­mit­ted to this project, what does the re­port­ed fig­ure of $100M re­fer to?”

Ac­cord­ing to in­formed Cab­i­net sources, with the cre­ation of Land­mark­TT, sig­nif­i­cant con­tracts re­lat­ed to the sup­ply of State hous­ing were trans­ferred to Ho­sein’s min­istry, with the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) be­com­ing more of a main­te­nance com­pa­ny for what pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ed, while all new and card­ed projects are han­dled by Land­mark­TT.

In April, the OPR halt­ed $3.48 bil­lion in con­tracts award­ed by the HDC to 11 con­trac­tors to cre­ate 3,700 new homes.

Among those 11, Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd was the largest ben­e­fi­cia­ry with a $1 bil­lion con­tract.

“Our re­port­ing and de­bat­ing on these is­sues has been con­fined to the usu­al claims of favoured con­trac­tors, po­lit­i­cal­ly favoured play­ers and al­le­ga­tions of im­prop­er be­hav­iour. None of those is­sues are unim­por­tant and they must be treat­ed with due se­ri­ous­ness, but what is emerg­ing here is the far more se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions of our en­trenched prac­tices.

“We must ex­plic­it­ly be­have as if pub­lic mon­ey is more im­por­tant than pri­vate mon­ey; there is no al­ter­na­tive. We have to ad­vance these con­cepts to prop­er­ly de­fend the pub­lic in­ter­est. Giv­en that ‘cozy con­sen­sus’ be­tween the po­lit­i­cal par­ties, we can­not ex­pect these crit­i­cal is­sues to be raised by our po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Is­sues of this kind ought to at­tract the at­ten­tion of our schol­ars at UWI and UTT, but here we are. Be­tween a rock and a hard place. What a dis­grace!” lament­ed Ray­mond.

Dis­close val­ue of lands

Ray­mond is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close the val­ue of the lands al­lo­cat­ed to Land­mark­TT.

Fol­low­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval ear­li­er this year, the com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished un­der Ho­sein as a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP).

Through this ini­tia­tive, the Gov­ern­ment will part­ner with pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors and de­vel­op­ers to con­struct high-qual­i­ty, un­sub­sidised hous­es on State lands in­to ful­ly planned res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties to serve mid­dle to up­per-in­come earn­ers and ex­pand the sup­ply of mod­ern hous­ing.

Last month, Ho­sein dis­closed that his min­istry had al­ready iden­ti­fied parcels of land.

“I can tell you that there’s one par­tic­u­lar project called Al­lam­by… That is in Tarou­ba. It’s a beau­ti­ful site right out­side of the ma­jor shop­ping ar­eas of C3 and South Park on the north­bound lane.”

Hav­ing seen the de­sign of the pro­posed hous­es, Ho­sein said, “It’s all go­ing to be gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties. We are ex­pect­ing to have the first set of homes, which is about 80 units, com­plet­ed at the end of this year.”

How­ev­er, giv­en the 200,000-plus HDC ap­pli­cants cur­rent­ly wait­ing in line for State hous­ing, Ray­mond said, “We need to con­sid­er the ex­tent to which that mod­el can de­liv­er the de­cent hous­ing so bad­ly need­ed by our poor­est cit­i­zens.”

With re­spect to the Land­mark TT de­vel­op­ments, which are to be fi­nanced by the de­vel­op­ers util­is­ing idle State lands with the Gov­ern­ment re­ceiv­ing a share of the land val­ue when homes are sold, Ray­mond warned that “there is a long-term and detri­men­tal blind spot in how projects are dis­cussed in our coun­try, in that we nev­er, ever men­tion the val­ue of the lands be­ing ded­i­cat­ed to these projects.

“We need to in­clude the val­ue of the land in our con­sid­er­a­tion of these projects. It is not pos­si­ble to ap­pre­ci­ate the full scope of these projects if we con­tin­ue to omit the land el­e­ment,” he stressed.

Ray­mond, who is a for­mer pres­i­dent of the In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors as well as the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil, fur­ther point­ed out that the on­ly fig­ure men­tioned is the con­tract sum for con­struc­tion.

“That needs to change. The State needs to ex­plic­it­ly de­clare the val­ue of the lands be­ing ded­i­cat­ed to these projects if we are to have a clear pic­ture of these de­vel­op­ments,” he said.

Ray­mond al­so raised con­cerns that pri­vate de­vel­op­ers are guar­an­teed pay­ment by the State even if the pro­ject­ed com­mer­cial out­comes are not met.

“Quite sim­ply, I do not at all ac­cept the no­tion that no pub­lic mon­ey is at risk in these projects. It all comes down to the dif­fer­ence be­tween the cash and ac­cru­al ap­proach­es to ac­count­ing, and that can be a chal­leng­ing mat­ter for some peo­ple.”

He said if the pri­vate sec­tor is not bear­ing any risks, it means that “we have been pur­su­ing a detri­men­tal PPP mod­el thus far.”

The State’s land bank

A 2016 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­port on an in­quiry in­to the land tenure is­sues in T&T stat­ed that the coun­try has a to­tal land area of 512,600 hectares, of which 52 per cent is owned by the State.

These lands now fall un­der the con­trol of Ho­sein’s min­istry.

The re­port stat­ed that lands held by Ca­roni 1975 Ltd were 31,567 hectares, for­est re­serve and pro­tect­ed ar­eas 167,584.7 hectares, land al­lo­cat­ed for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es 29,863 hectares and land al­lo­cat­ed to oth­er state-owned com­pa­nies and au­thor­i­ties 37,717 hectares, which to­talled 266,731.7 hectares or 658,000 acres.

With the State con­trol­ling over half of T&T’s land mass, there is a grow­ing sense of an­tic­i­pa­tion about how the min­istry will shape the land­scape of land man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion, and ad­dress the long­stand­ing is­sues of land fraud and cor­rup­tion.

For­mer vice chair­man of the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) Stephen Broad­bridge, for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath and for­mer pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Sug­ar Boil­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Ra­keeb Mo­hammed said the is­sue of State lands go­ing in­to the wrong hands, pub­lic ser­vants be­ing in­volved in land fraud and busi­ness peo­ple brib­ing Gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees to fast-track doc­u­ments have al­ways been touchy and con­tentious sub­jects.

The trio ar­gued that these is­sues must be tack­led for a fair and eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of State lands to cit­i­zens.

Ho­sein was one of sev­er­al min­is­ters who were giv­en ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties af­ter be­ing sworn in as Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries last May.

One of the ma­jor changes made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the re­moval of the en­tire land port­fo­lio from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, led by Sen­a­tor Ravi Rati­ram. This port­fo­lio was giv­en to Ho­sein to over­see, along with the con­sol­i­da­tion of sev­er­al State agen­cies, en­ter­pris­es and di­vi­sions to en­sure that the sys­tems gov­ern­ing land are ef­fi­cient, trans­par­ent and ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic.

Ho­sein was tasked with the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of tenure, hous­ing for squat­ters, sur­veys and map­ping, val­u­a­tion and over­see­ing the Land Sur­vey Board of T&T, the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA), the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion (LMD), and EM­BD.

Un­der the LMD, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (COSL) is charged with the over­all man­age­ment, dis­tri­b­u­tion and al­lo­ca­tion of all State lands.

LSA and EM­BD were pre­vi­ous­ly man­aged un­der the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, re­spec­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, af­ter the Cab­i­net re­align­ment, Ho­sein was giv­en the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) and the Evolv­ing Tec­knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTecK) to su­per­vise.

The min­istry’s web­site al­so shows that Ho­sein has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the new­ly es­tab­lished Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Ltd, the Law Re­vi­sion Com­mis­sion, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, li­cences such as births, deaths and mar­riages, Jus­tice of the Peace and com­mis­sion­er of af­fi­davits.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk un­der­stands he is al­so in­clud­ed in key le­gal ne­go­ti­a­tion mat­ters in­volv­ing the State.

Re­solv­ing Ca­roni leas­es

On the eve of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress cel­e­brat­ing its first an­niver­sary in of­fice last month, Ho­sein spoke about the 600 leas­es he dis­trib­uted to for­mer Ca­roni 1975 Ltd work­ers who wait­ed 23 years for their le­gal doc­u­ments and the 20,000 peo­ple who had re­cent­ly ap­plied un­der the LSA’s Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme, stat­ing they were work­ing to­wards re­sults.

Ca­roni 1975 Ltd was shut down in 2003. Its lands, com­pris­ing 77,000 acres, span from Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road to far-flung Wood­land.

The EM­BD was re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing 7,246 two-acre agri­cul­tur­al par­cel lots and 8,885 res­i­den­tial plots for for­mer Ca­roni 1975 Ltd work­ers as part of their Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion (VSEP) pack­ages.

Hav­ing worked as a sug­ar boil­er for 24 years in Ca­roni, Mo­hammed said it pained his heart to see peo­ple who were nev­er em­ploy­ees of the com­pa­ny giv­en lands ahead of those who slaved in the sug­ar­cane fields.

Mo­hammed said politi­cians, busi­ness­men, con­trac­tors and State of­fi­cials were ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Ca­roni’s land.

Mo­hammed said these “big boys” were giv­en large acreages of Ca­roni lands in prime lo­ca­tions in Wa­ter­loo, Cou­va, Re­form, Chan­der­nagore and Cal­cut­ta, while farm­ers were al­lo­cat­ed lands in ar­eas that were not eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

“Some of them get leas­es and they didn’t know if it was be­hind God’s back. There were no ac­cess roads…on­ly bush,” he said, adding that the big boys “start­ed off by plant­i­ng a few trees on the land and then it mush­roomed in­to a busi­ness.

“So the land cor­rup­tion was there for a long time. Them big boys make re­al deal. I could call a few names of who get land. I am not go­ing to blame one gov­ern­ment. I will blame them all. Every­thing in Trinidad is a bobol.”

He fur­ther lament­ed that State lands were go­ing in­to the hands of un­de­serv­ing peo­ple.

“This has to stop,” Mo­hammed said, point­ing out that at least half of the for­mer Ca­roni work­ers have died with­out re­ceiv­ing what was right­ful­ly due to them.

“Noth­ing could be more painful for the fam­i­lies of these work­ers who passed away.”

Last Feb­ru­ary, Mo­hammed, 66, said he ap­plied for a vari­a­tion to his agri­cul­tur­al lease but is still await­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“I want to trans­fer the land to my chil­dren, but I can’t do any­thing un­til I get that doc­u­ment. I checked for an up­date re­cent­ly and I was told that my file had not been touched. It was still sit­ting on a tray.”

In the mean­time, the min­istry still has to hand out ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 Ca­roni leas­es, as some sites are still in­com­plete.

In 2019, Ca­roni (1975) chair­man Jer­ry Hospedales re­vealed that since the State-owned com­pa­ny closed down in 2003, the Gov­ern­ment has spent $10 bil­lion in “wrap­ping” it up.

Role of agen­cies

The Land Set­tle­ment Agency’s role is to reg­u­larise squat­ters and ten­ants in oc­cu­pa­tion of State lands. There are over 250 squat­ting sites scat­tered through­out the coun­try, with over 60,000 peo­ple squat­ting fam­i­lies oc­cu­py­ing State lands.

Es­tab­lished in 1972, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) is em­pow­ered to pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment of 4,850 hectares of land on the north-west penin­su­la. The land in­cludes the Ch­aguara­mas Golf Course, com­pris­ing 39 hectares.

In March, Evolv­ing Tec­knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTecK) was trans­ferred from Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Ka­ma Ma­haraj to Ho­sein. eTecK has an ex­ten­sive port­fo­lio of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,915 hectares of land. These in­clude de­vel­oped, re­serves and fu­ture strate­gic sites across 22 in­dus­tri­al parks, no­tably the 1,100-acre Tamana In­Tech Park, as well as the Mag­dale­na Grand and Hilton Trinidad.