Shas­tri Boodan

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) is set to re­launch its pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise for the con­struc­tion of thou­sands of hous­ing units, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has said.

Lee said the new pro­cure­ment process would be guid­ed by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion ear­li­er this year to can­cel the HDC’s con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion De­sign-Build-Fi­nance (DBF) hous­ing pro­gramme.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Lee said the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise would be restart­ed to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its com­mit­ment to ex­pand the coun­try’s hous­ing stock.

“It will come back out, and we will start de­liv­er­ing and build­ing hous­es as promised by this ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Lee said.

The can­celled DBF pro­gramme was in­tend­ed to de­liv­er ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,700 hous­ing units. The Gov­ern­ment opt­ed to ter­mi­nate the pro­cure­ment process rather than al­low it to be­come mired in dis­putes and de­lays that could fur­ther post­pone con­struc­tion.

Lee said the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the HDC had al­so made progress in com­plet­ing hous­ing projects that were start­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said, how­ev­er, that the Gov­ern­ment was still ad­dress­ing is­sues with­in the HDC, in­clud­ing what he de­scribed as cor­rup­tion and ques­tion­able main­te­nance con­tracts.

“As you know, we are still try­ing to get a han­dle of the kind of cor­rup­tion that took place un­der HDC. There are a lot of the main­te­nance con­tracts that leave much to be de­sired,” Lee said.

He said HDC chair­man and his team were mak­ing progress in re­view­ing main­te­nance con­tracts and ad­dress­ing al­leged cor­rup­tion with­in HDC de­vel­op­ments.

Lee al­so clar­i­fied the role of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Philip Alexan­der, say­ing Alexan­der was work­ing un­der his di­rec­tion as the line min­is­ter.

“Min­is­ter Alexan­der has a role to play. He’s not out there on his own. Every time he goes out there, he talks to me as the line min­is­ter,” Lee said.

He said Alexan­der had been high­light­ing is­sues in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly those re­lat­ing to HDC de­vel­op­ments and in­fra­struc­ture.

Lee was speak­ing while dis­trib­ut­ing hun­dreds of school­bags to stu­dents in his Ca­roni Cen­tral con­stituen­cy from his Mis­sion Road, Freeport of­fice.

The ini­tia­tive, known as the Back­pack for Hope pro­gramme, is in its 12th year. Lee said it be­gan when he was the MP for Point-a-Pierre.

More than 600 school­bags con­tain­ing sta­tionery for the new school term are be­ing dis­trib­uted over two days.

Lee al­so dis­closed that the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to­wards com­plet­ing the long-de­layed Preysal Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, which has been op­er­at­ing from the Preysal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre since 2014 af­ter con­struc­tion of a new school was halt­ed.

The Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, which was de­stroyed by fire in 2023, is al­so a pri­or­i­ty, he said.

“I’m work­ing with the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure that these schools are com­plet­ed,” Lee said.