The State may be forced to foot the bill for hir­ing over 2,300 in­terns at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) in the lead-up to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. Hous­ing Min­is­ter Phillip Alexan­der says files will soon be hand­ed over to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, de­tail­ing how the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion al­leged­ly used the HDC as a po­lit­i­cal tool.

Dur­ing Mon­day night’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) (Fi­nan­cial Year 2025) Bill, Alexan­der said the files al­leged that for­mer min­is­ters or­ches­trat­ed the hir­ing. Along­side Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Anil Roberts, Alexan­der claimed he dis­cov­ered an $81 mil­lion short­fall in the min­istry’s ac­counts: funds crit­i­cal for op­er­a­tions and re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture that should have been in the orig­i­nal bud­get.

Their probe re­vealed that ad hoc de­ci­sions and un­bud­get­ed spend­ing had tak­en place, in­clud­ing the sud­den on­board­ing of tem­po­rary work­ers in March and April.