KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has ac­cused state-owned HDC, which falls un­der Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, of re­ceiv­ing a po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tive to evict cus­tomers sup­port­ing can­di­dates seek­ing lead­er­ship change in the PNM.

Asked yes­ter­day for ev­i­dence of his claims, Mooni­lal, the UNC’s shad­ow Hous­ing Min­is­ter, said he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that HDC has sent evic­tion no­tices to peo­ple who vot­ed in sup­port of PNM’s Laven­tille West hope­ful Ka­reem Mar­celle in­stead of the in­cum­bent MP for the con­stituen­cy, Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Mooni­lal added it was not the right time to threat­en evic­tion since most of the ten­ants ow­ing HDC are strug­gling fi­nan­cial­ly due to the high cost of liv­ing.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, Mooni­lal said, “Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Camille Robin­son-Reg­is must in­struct the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion to hold its hand on its new wave of evic­tions of hous­ing clients. The HDC has writ­ten to sev­er­al home­own­ers and ten­ants threat­en­ing to eject them for pay­ment delin­quen­cy.

“Most of the clients in ar­rears are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial prob­lems be­cause of the lack of mean­ing­ful job op­por­tu­ni­ties and the high cost of liv­ing. There are al­so re­ports that the cor­po­ra­tion has been po­lit­i­cal­ly or­dered to ex­pel home oc­cu­piers sup­port­ing can­di­dates seek­ing lead­er­ship change in the PNM. This is vin­dic­tive and cru­el.

“The PNM is now in a civ­il war, and in­no­cent HDC oc­cu­piers are tar­gets as col­lat­er­al dam­age. The min­is­ter must give a pub­lic di­rec­tive to the cor­po­ra­tion.”

How­ev­er, Robin­son-Reg­is, the HDC and Mar­celle have all fired back, re­fut­ing claims that ten­ants are be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day that evic­tions are pure­ly a fi­nan­cial mat­ter.

“As min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the HDC, I wish to state that there has been no di­rec­tive by me or any­one else in the HDC to tar­get per­sons be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions. Per­haps that is the UNC style of pol­i­tics and Dr Mooni­lal’s in par­tic­u­lar, but cer­tain­ly, that is not how we in the 68-year-old PNM op­er­ate. The HDC’s man­date to im­prove its debt col­lec­tion and re­duce its delin­quen­cy ra­tio is pure­ly a mat­ter of pru­dent fis­cal man­age­ment.

“The time span be­tween the com­mence­ment of the process of evic­tion to ac­tu­al evic­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly four months, and dur­ing that time, every op­por­tu­ni­ty is pro­vid­ed to the ten­ant to make good on their ten­an­cy oblig­a­tions. Evic­tion is, and has al­ways been, a last re­sort for the HDC,” the min­is­ter said.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ques­tioned Mooni­lal’s lead­er­ship style.

“Dr Mooni­lal’s me­dia state­ment seeks again to de­flect from his own cur­rent cir­cum­stances, and in keep­ing with his leader’s style, adopts a pop­ulist ap­proach to gov­er­nance, which con­ve­nient­ly ig­nores the rule of law, as well as es­tab­lished poli­cies and pro­ce­dures. By call­ing for an end to evic­tions be­fore elec­tions, Mooni­lal is pre­sum­ing to know the date of the gen­er­al elec­tion. This is the same Roodal Mooni­lal who is ac­cused of en­gag­ing in the award of mul­ti­ple mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts days be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.”

The HDC, in its state­ment, said it was not tar­get­ing peo­ple be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions.

“The claim that the HDC is tar­get­ing peo­ple be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions is not on­ly false but mis­lead­ing. We wish to echo the sen­ti­ments of the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, the Ho­n­ourable Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who con­firmed that nei­ther she nor any em­ploy­ee from the HDC in­struct­ed per­sons to tar­get its ten­ants be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal choic­es. If ten­ants do not va­cate the premis­es by the stip­u­lat­ed time frame, they are per­son­al­ly ad­vised of the evic­tion. It is on­ly those ten­ants who choose to stay af­ter all at­tempts have been made to re­cov­er funds or es­tab­lish a rea­son­able pay­ment plan, who are evict­ed.”

Mar­celle, when con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia to re­spond to claims that his sup­port­ers were be­ing evict­ed, called it UNC pro­pa­gan­da.

“That is ab­solute­ly false news, lies and UNC pro­pa­gan­da at its best. No such thing oc­curred. Dr Mooni­lal and the UNC should spend their time and re­sources fo­cus­ing on their po­lit­i­cal sink­ing ship (UNC) which is be­ing led a po­lit­i­cal leader who has lost the most elec­tions con­sec­u­tive­ly in our na­tion’s his­to­ry. The PNM has nev­er op­er­at­ed in this man­ner and we will nev­er do. We are held to the high­est stan­dards. I re­ject and con­demn these base­less al­le­ga­tions,” he said.