In a May 15 state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, Sad­dam Ho­sein, set out to ad­dress the con­cerns raised in the pub­lic, most­ly by Guardian Me­dia, about the op­er­a­tions of this coun­try’s most re­cent­ly es­tab­lished state en­ter­prise, Land­mark TT.

In the state­ment, Mr Ho­sein dis­closed that in No­vem­ber 2025, Cab­i­net agreed and ap­proved the es­tab­lish­ment of a PPP (Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship) be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate de­vel­op­ers for the de­liv­ery of ex­pe­dit­ed res­i­den­tial ac­com­mo­da­tion.

He said that in Jan­u­ary 2026, Cab­i­net agreed to es­tab­lish a new state en­ter­prise, called Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Ltd, which would be in­cor­po­rat­ed and re­spon­si­ble for the PPP.

“Un­der the PPP mod­el, the State shall make lands avail­able to pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors and de­vel­op­ers, who shall, in turn, con­struct ful­ly planned hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties tar­get­ed at mid-to-up­per in­come earn­ers. These hous­ing units will be sit­u­at­ed in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties with mod­ern de­sign and ameni­ties to cater for the work­ing class,” said the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Juan/Barataria.

“The State is not re­quired to seek fi­nanc­ing for any of these hous­ing projects as no pub­lic funds will be used for the con­struc­tion of these homes...The de­vel­op­ers will be re­quired to fund the en­tire con­struc­tion and in­fra­struc­tur­al cost of the projects...

“The cur­rent mod­el is that Land­mark­TT, be­ing the hold­ing com­pa­ny of the state lands, will make the lands avail­able to the de­vel­op­er, but not trans­fer ti­tle of the lands to the de­vel­op­er...

“Fol­low­ing the De­sign-Fi­nance-Build mod­el, and agreed pay­ment sched­ule, the con­trac­tor is re­spon­si­ble for fund­ing the en­tire de­vel­op­ment cost. No mon­ey will be col­lect­ed by the de­vel­op­er un­til the units are ac­tu­al­ly sold. So up­on sale of the units, on the open mar­ket, Land­mark TT will keep its share of the pro­ceeds for the land and the de­vel­op­er will then be paid for the con­struc­tion of the hous­ing unit. Sim­ple mat­ter.”

Ques­tions for Sad­dam

Some ques­tions arise from Mr Ho­sein’s state­ment to Par­lia­ment last month:

* There is con­fu­sion, in my view, with re­gard to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate de­vel­op­ers. At one point, the min­is­ter states that the con­trac­tor “would be re­spon­si­ble for fund­ing the en­tire de­vel­op­ment cost,” and two sen­tences lat­er, he says “the de­vel­op­er will then be paid for the con­struc­tion of the hous­ing unit.”

Which is it?

Is it that the con­trac­tor would be paid for the con­struc­tion of the hous­ing units, but would be re­spon­si­ble for “the en­tire de­vel­op­ment cost” of the project? The de­vel­op­ment costs of a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties would in­clude, in­ter alia, the roads to, and with­in, the gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, drainage, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and fi­bre con­nec­tions and pos­si­bly a sew­er­age treat­ment plant?

* At one point, Mr Ho­sein says these ful­ly planned hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties would be “tar­get­ed at mid-to-up­per in­come earn­ers.” He al­so refers to hous­ing units cater­ing for the “work­ing class” and to the hous­es be­ing of­fered on the “open mar­ket.” So, is the tar­get mar­ket doc­tors, lawyers and ac­coun­tants or teach­ers and po­lice of­fi­cers?

* In the Sun­day Guardian of May 17, char­tered sur­vey­or and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ray­mond and Pierre, Afra Ray­mond asked the ex­treme­ly im­por­tant ques­tion: “What is the area and val­ue of the State lands com­mit­ed to this project?” He was re­fer­ring to the Al­lam­by res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

The ques­tion of the val­ue of the State land is po­tent be­cause, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, up­on the sale of the hous­es built un­der this De­sign-Build-Fi­nance mod­el, “Land­mark TT will keep its share of the pro­ceeds for the land and the de­vel­op­er will then be paid for the con­struc­tion of the hous­ing unit.”

If Land­mark TT is be­ing paid based on the val­ue of the State land, have all of the lands that the com­pa­ny in­tends to make avail­able to the pri­vate de­vel­op­ers been val­ued?

If the land that is be­ing used by the pri­vate de­vel­op­ers to build hous­es is, in ef­fect, the State’s eq­ui­ty in these de­vel­op­ments, is it not cru­cial that the pub­lic know the val­ue of the State’s in­vest­ment in these prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ments?

Se­lec­tive or open bid­ding?

In the May 15 pre­sen­ta­tion, Mr Ho­sein said, “I am ad­vised that on the Al­lam­by site, a se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment method was utilised for the se­lec­tion of the de­vel­op­ers, all of whom were al­ready reg­is­tered the OPR (Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion) de­posi­tary as con­trac­tors in that line of busi­ness. And the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­er in this case 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.”

On the Land­mark TT web­site, the state com­pa­ny re­veals that Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing re­ceived an award of $129.83 mil­lion on April 17 for the pro­vi­sion of De­sign-Build-Fi­nance ser­vices for the con­struc­tion of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes and du­plex­es at the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

In his par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion, Mr Ho­sein added, “I am ad­vised, Mr Speak­er, that by let­ter dat­ed April 20, 2026, from the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor to Land­mark TT, the OPR in­di­cat­ed that it re­ceived for­mal com­plaints in re­la­tion to the Al­lam­by project.”

In ef­fect, the OPR was sig­nalling that it was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the award of the $129.83 mil­lion award to Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing to es­tab­lish whether it con­formed with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, es­pe­cial­ly as the con­tract was award­ed on a se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive ba­sis.

That Act, at sec­tion 5 (1) states that the ob­jects of the leg­is­la­tion are to pro­mote—

“(a) The prin­ci­ples of ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and val­ue for mon­ey;

(b) Ef­fi­cien­cy, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty and pub­lic con­fi­dence; and

(c) Lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment, sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, in pub­lic pro­cure­ment and the dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty.”

But the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions state, at 5 (1) “With­out lim­i­ta­tion to Reg­u­la­tion 29, a pub­lic body shall utilise open bid­ding, un­less the com­plex­i­ty of the pro­cure­ment or mar­ket con­di­tions ren­ders an­oth­er method more ap­pro­pri­ate for achiev­ing the best val­ue for mon­ey.

At 5 (2), the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions add, “(2) Open bid­ding may be pre­ced­ed by a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion or pre-se­lec­tion process set out in the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Pre-Qual­i­fi­ca­tion and Pre-Se­lec­tion) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021. These pro­ce­dures are ap­pro­pri­ate for large-scale, tech­ni­cal­ly com­plex and high-val­ue projects for goods, works or non-con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.”

It seems clear to me that in the lo­cal pro­cure­ment law, the de­fault pref­er­ence is for open bid­ding and a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion process, un­less the state body can prove that an­oth­er se­lec­tion process is more ap­pro­pri­ate.

A de­fin­i­tive re­sponse on this is­sue would pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant guid­ance to the con­struc­tion sec­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as the OPR is al­so re­view­ing the de­ci­sion of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) in April this year to award a con­tract worth $1 bil­lion to Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing. Mr Ramhit's fam­i­ly busi­ness re­ceived $1 bil­lion out of con­tracts worth $3.4 bil­lion that HDC award­ed to 11 con­trac­tors in to­tal.

The con­nec­tion be­tween the award of con­tracts by Land­mark TT and HDC and the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print projects is ap­pro­pri­ate be­cause if the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor, Bev­er­ly Khan, de­ter­mines that it is ap­pro­pri­ate for state bod­ies to award hous­ing con­tracts based on se­lec­tive rather than open bid­ding, there is no doubt, in my mind, that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion will en­sure that ON­LY its fi­nanciers get any of the 129 con­tracts worth an es­ti­mat­ed $10 bil­lion that are up for grabs un­der the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print.