MORE than $1 billion dollars is being owed to contractors by the State agency the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).
Minister of Housing and Urban Development Camille Robinson-Regis said contractors were owed $1.3 billion and were upset that they have not yet been paid.
She was speaking during the launch of an updated online portal called the Housing Application Fulfilment System (HAFS) on Wednesday.
Robinson-Regis said, “We have been tardy in our payments, our contractors are upset.”
She is blaming the large debt partly on delinquent HDC tenants, some of whom have not paid HDC since acquiring a unit.
The Member of Parliament for Arouca/Maloney said, “I know of people in my own constituency whose rental may be in the order of $100, $250 and yet they owing $50,000, which means from the day they got the unit they have not paid.”
Such tenants reside in older units but tenants of newer, more expensive properties were also owing approximately $22 million.
Since 2016, HDC’s debt outstanding from tenants has been increasing from $159 million to $151 million by 2022.
The debt owed by tenants not only stalled payments to contractors but also prevented repairs to units and the expansion of the housing programme.
“We have been providing this facility even though we do have such a high delinquency rate and some of the people who owe the HDC are some of the people who complain the most,” Robinson-Regis said.
Now that the economy has been opened back after almost two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the minister is encouraging all HDC tenants to pay what they owe.
During the pandemic, HDC had issued a moratorium on payments to help ease the financial strain.
Robinson-Regis said, “I’m hoping that people will understand the situation in which we have found ourselves and they will, in fact, do what they have to do.”
Making payment and applications easier
To assist with easier payments, HDC created an Omni channel for customers to make payments.
This includes bank transfers, bank deposits, payroll deductions and Sure Pay.
HDC will also resume its public education campaign.
Robinson-Regis said, “We want to ensure that people feel the commitment to pay and also that it is not a difficulty to make their payments.”
She also said the HDC was attempting to achieve its mandate of providing affordable housing and changes will be made to achieve that goal.
With the new HAFS online portal, Robinson-Regis is encouraging over 200,000 citizens who have previously applied for housing to update their applications.
Applicants can conduct self-assessments, obtain pre-approvals via the mortgage calculator, check the status of their application and obtain a reference number via the portal.
Interested persons can visit http://hafs.housing.gov.tt/.
