Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

One day af­ter it was gazetted, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries, Sad­dam Ho­sein, an­nounced that his min­istry has now as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies & En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd (eTecK).

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that there were ten­sions be­tween eTecK’s chair, Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark, and then line min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, which re­sult­ed in the state en­ter­prise be­ing moved.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Ramkissoon-Mark took is­sue, among oth­ers, with the state en­ter­prise be­ing di­rect­ed to sign off on a Ho­tel Man­age­ment Agree­ment with the Hilton last No­vem­ber, with­out writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion from the line min­istry that the req­ui­site funds would be re­leased to sup­port the project’s im­ple­men­ta­tion, as it could po­ten­tial­ly ex­pose the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors and of­fi­cers to claims of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty and fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety.

Re­fur­bish­ment works to the tune of $400 mil­lion are need­ed to up­grade the ho­tel, but there is no pro­vi­sion in the 2025 bud­get for the in­vest­ment. Giv­en the stale­mate over the re­fur­bish­ment works and the ho­tel’s in­abil­i­ty to main­tain a Hilton stan­dard, the hote­lier is con­sid­er­ing re­mov­ing its brand from the ho­tel, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed.

Yes­ter­day, both eTecK and Ho­sein’s min­istry is­sued me­dia re­leas­es, but Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get a com­ment from Ma­haraj on the change.

In its state­ment, the min­istry said the move as “strate­gic” to elim­i­nate bu­reau­cra­cy and ac­cel­er­ate na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“This tran­si­tion is de­signed to lever­age eTeck’s sig­nif­i­cant land hold­ings to pro­vide un­par­al­leled land se­cu­ri­ty and stream­lined in­vest­ment process­es,” the re­lease said.

The re­lease said Ho­sein ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on her “strate­gic vi­sion for this tran­si­tion, not­ing that her lead­er­ship has been in­stru­men­tal in mod­ernising the State’s ap­proach to land ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­vest­ment.”

The re­lease not­ed that eTecK has an ex­ten­sive port­fo­lio of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,915 hectares of land, which in­cludes de­vel­oped, re­serve and fu­ture strate­gic sites across 22 in­dus­tri­al parks, the 1,100-acre Tamana In­Tech Park and the Mag­dale­na Grand and Hilton Trinidad.

“By re­align­ing these sig­nif­i­cant hold­ings un­der the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, the Gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing a ‘one-stop shop’ for land ad­min­is­tra­tion. This move di­rect­ly ben­e­fits ten­ants by ac­cel­er­at­ing lease pro­cess­ing, con­sol­i­dat­ing da­ta, and en­hanc­ing ti­tle se­cu­ri­ty, all of which are crit­i­cal for se­cur­ing the pri­vate fi­nanc­ing and long-term cap­i­tal in­vest­ment nec­es­sary for in­dus­tri­al growth,” the re­lease said.

For its part, eTecK said it was pleased with the move and ex­tend­ed its full sup­port “as he as­sumes over­sight of the com­pa­ny to ad­vance its man­date of de­vel­op­ing and man­ag­ing strate­gic in­dus­tri­al es­tates, fos­ter­ing in­vest­ment and con­tribut­ing to the sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth of T&T.”

The com­pa­ny said it looks for­ward to work­ing un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, as it will fur­ther stream­line land man­age­ment for its ten­ants and se­cure in­vest­ments that would strength­en op­er­a­tional per­for­mance and en­hance stake­hold­er val­ue.

“eTecK un­der­scores its com­mit­ment to the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment and trans­for­ma­tion of the com­pa­ny in align­ment with na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties. We are con­fi­dent that un­der the min­istry’s guid­ance, e TecK will con­tin­ue to evolve and play a vi­tal role in shap­ing a com­pet­i­tive and di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my,” their re­lease said.

The tone of the re­leas­es is dif­fer­ent from the ten­sions which pushed Ramkissoon-Mark to chal­lenge ac­tions giv­en by Ma­haraj that she felt could be con­strued as tres­pass­ing on the au­ton­o­my of the board. She had al­so chal­lenged the un­der­stand­ing of rel­e­vant laws which the State en­ti­ty need­ed to com­ply with, such as the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act with any Pub­lic Pri­vate Arrange­ment.

Eteck has now been added to the grow­ing port­fo­lio of com­pa­nies un­der Ho­sein, in ad­di­tion to the new com­pa­ny, Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

Ho­sein had de­scribed Land­mark TT as a spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­ny ap­proved by the Cab­i­net to dri­ve pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships in hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.