KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der has fired back at Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’ call for the dis­missal of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) board and all three hous­ing min­is­ters, fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing pro­cure­ment process.

On Thurs­day, Beck­les called for the im­me­di­ate dis­missal of Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee and min­is­ters in his min­istry, Anil Roberts and Alexan­der. She al­so called for the re­moval of the HDC board, led by Feeroz Khan.

Beck­les ar­gued that the de­ci­sion to can­cel the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise was proof the process was flawed from the out­set. She al­so al­leged that the ex­er­cise in­volved the pro­posed award of con­tracts to favoured UNC fi­nanciers and new­ly formed com­pa­nies with lit­tle or no hous­ing de­vel­op­ment ex­pe­ri­ence.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der dis­missed Beck­les’ crit­i­cism, ac­cus­ing her of hypocrisy and se­lec­tive out­rage, while point­ing to al­leged pro­cure­ment con­tro­ver­sies dur­ing the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said: “Pen­ny Beck­les has nine­ty-nine prob­lems, but the UNC Gov­ern­ment, these hous­ing min­is­ters or this HDC isn’t one.

“Why didn’t the same Pen­ny Beck­les call for the fir­ing of PNM min­is­ters in 2024 when the then HDC had to can­cel the San­ta Rosa hous­ing project for bid­ding ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, ac­cord­ing to the OPR? Why didn’t she call for the fir­ing of PNM min­is­ters when they sig­nalled the in­tent to fraud­u­lent­ly award a bil­lion-dol­lar con­tract to Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny in that same year for vi­o­lat­ing pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions?

“Where was she in Jan­u­ary 2024 when the HDC un­der her stew­ard­ship re­newed 306 con­tracts val­ued at hun­dreds of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars by let­ter to PNM friends, fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers with­out ten­der? Not one ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty in our projects has been high­light­ed by the OPR, but now she’s call­ing for heads to roll? Pen­ny needs to for­get our heads and hold tight to hers, as per­sons around her seem in­tent on tak­ing it.”

Alexan­der de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to can­cel the con­tracts, say­ing it was tak­en in the best in­ter­est of the pro­cure­ment process.

He added: “The de­ci­sion tak­en to pull the con­tracts is in the best in­ter­est of the process. We will be com­plet­ing these projects and more in due course.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Lee and Roberts, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time, al­though Lee had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed he would is­sue a state­ment.