Moonilal finds corruption in distribution of government houses

Trinidad and Tobago's Housing Minister has told the country's Housing Development Corporation (HDC) to immediately stop the distribution of government houses.

Moonilal told the Newsday newspaper initial investigations into the operations of the HDC have uncovered illegal activities.

He said according to reports one official tried to allocate over 900 housing units immediately before the May 24 General Election while the PNM government was still in office.

He said the official bypassed all established processes for transparency and equity.

"I have asked that that directive be recalled. We are committed to transparency, equality and fairness in the distribution of houses at the HDC and we intend to do this in the fastest possible time," Moonilal said.

The minister has ordered a freeze to the distribution of housing units until the housing policy is reviewed. That review began Monday.

The CEO of HDC, Jearlean John said she is aware of allegations that there were persons "outside of the HDC and people inside of the HDC who colluded to allocate houses illegally."

She said police "were very involved, anti corruption unit and fraud squad had a very active investigation, but I am unaware of the outcome." She said the HDC has distributed 26,000 homes.

Under the HDC rules, persons are allocated homes through random draws. However John said the rules have changed "in emergency cases and sometimes from the directive of the line minister."

Moonilal also told the paper about poor workmanship at many of the HDC units.

“From the basic information received we have to investigate the construction of homes for the past four years given the fact that many of them are uninhabitable despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent,” Moonilal told the paper.

He said so far he has found poor workmanship in the construction of homes and evidence of "massive corruption" by the HDC throughout the country.

Moonilal said there were high cost overruns in the Housing Estate along with legal issues with respect to the titles for land and homes and said he intends to "get to the bottom of all this".

John agrees with Moonilal about shoddy workmanship at many of the homes. However she said the HDC cannot hold the contractor liable because it was "outside the liability period".

She told Newsday, "We used moral persuasion with contractors. We effected repairs where we could on a merit basis."