President of the T&T Contractors Association Mikey Joseph is not surprised that the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) has spent TT$500 million on remedial work at sites across the country over the past four years. “I am not surprised and of course they are to be blamed for some of the problems we see today. They brought in people with no experience to do the work,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“HDC brought in people who are not truly conversant in the building and construction industry. If you look at those houses now and you check the track record you will see.” In a Sunday Guardian report yesterday, Housing Minister Roodal Moonilal said poor workmanship by contractors on several housing estates prior to 2010 resulted in HDC having to fork out millions of dollars to rectify issues.
According to the report, some of the areas affected by the shoddy work included Golconda, Retrench, Lion Gates, Couva and Mayaro. Moonilal spoke about houses in Retrench that are on the verge of collapse which will see the HDC having to spend up to $5 million to construct retaining walls to alleviate the problem. The report also stated that as an early gift to housing applicants, the HDC will give out 1,000 units for Christmas and overall 4,008 are to be given out by 2016.
Commenting on this yesterday, Joseph said the Government needs to set up a project management process whereby the construction process is effectively and efficiently managed. “A local house is not easy to build. If you do not manage it, there would be disaster,” he said.
“It is one thing to say the houses are poor quality. But if the houses are of poor quality then there should have been a procedure to come up with ways to manage the construction process. If that has never been done then what the Government is saying is just talk.” Joseph also spoke about a need for change in the “policy decision” of the HDC.
“There has been talk in the past of building the houses and then putting in the infrastructure after. That is a policy decision for the inner workings of HDC. “If that (if a policy is not developed) is not done then there is no transparency, whether in the award of contracts or in the pre-qualification phase or any part of the process,” Joseph said.
He said the Government’s complaint about spending $500 million to rehabilitate poor work done on HDC houses was also “laughable.” But he said if the Government is serious about fixing the issues involved an investigation should be launched. “I say this because every house built was bad. One has to determine whether it was infrastructure work put in or whether it was shoddy work.
“If that is the case then why doesn’t the Attorney General act? They should launch an investigation, after all it is taxpayers’ money, and let them take action,” he added.
