Who is responsible for Chinese housing mess?

- Photo courtesy Pixabay
- Photo courtesy Pixabay

THE EDITOR: Dr Rowley tells the nation that it does not matter that he was the minister of housing at the time an agreement was made between the government of this country and the China Gezhouba Corporation to commit $500 million of taxpayers’ money to that Chinese corporation to build HDC houses. He says he has not bothered to “even check to see if that is so.”
As far as he is concerned, whether he was housing minister at the time the agreement was reportedly effected or whether someone else was, “that is of no consequence” since, if he was, he only happened to be holding that portfolio “temporarily.”

He added: “That is an administrative thing and [he] has no personal involvement or interaction.”
The Prime Minister also dismissed concerns about Newman George’s role in negotiating the contract between the HDC/State and the Chinese corporation. He repeated the assertion he advanced for himself: “It was not a Newman George thing.” So I am asking, whose “thing” was it?
On May 17, 2018, the Newsday in an article reported that the HDC and a Chinese company, China Gezhouba Group International Engineering Co Ltd (popularly known as CGGC) signed the formal agreement to construct 5,000 apartment units at specific sites across Trinidad.
This signing ceremony was held on May 17 at the Hyatt Regency in Port of Spain. Edmund Dillon was Housing and Urban Development Minister at that signing ceremony. Dillon was transferred from the ministry of national security in 2018 at around the same time that he had to attend court in New York regarding an issue about the ownership of an apartment in that city.
China Gezhouba Group executive vice president Zhou Xing and HDC chairman Newman George signed the documents for phase one of the construction project.
The costs and other associated matters related to the contract were determined after a year of negotiations between both organisations – HDC and CGGC. The Cabinet had reportedly reviewed the substantive agreement before or during these negotiations.
This contract has been suddenly cancelled although it was executed legally and was conducted with the authority of the board, which acted within its remit.
At a post-Cabinet briefing, the Prime Minister said the contract had been scrapped and the HDC would be restarting the tender process for the housing units. He said the “HDC had been instructed to go back out to tender, because there were some parts of that contract which did not meet the Cabinet’s acceptance and approval, structurally and legalistically.”
Is this the same Cabinet that had initially reviewed the agreement between the HDC and CGGC? If the HDC is an independent entity as Finance Minister Colm Imbert asserted in Parliament, then who instructed the HDC to retender the project, and by what authority?
Without wishing to “personalise” the issue, I am asking who is responsible for this debacle? Is it the HDC board, its chairman? Is it the Cabinet or the Prime Minister? Or is it the entire Government? Someone or some people must be responsible. The mess did not materialise on its own. Or maybe it did!
STEVE SMITH
via e-mail

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"Who is responsible for Chinese housing mess?"

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