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In an ef­fort to ramp up the con­struc­tion of new hous­es, new­ly-mint­ed Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has promised that the Gov­ern­ment will make funds avail­able to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to pay con­trac­tors.

Af­ter tour­ing HDC con­struc­tion sites on Mon­day, Lee said HDC had been do­ing good work but projects had slowed down un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion be­cause con­trac­tors were not get­ting pay­ments on time.

Lee said, “I’ve seen good de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place and good work, but as I said, it could be ramped up if pay­ments or the process of pay­ment flow can be made much faster. I know the con­straints of HDC. I know the con­straints of the coun­try. So, one of my biggest re­spon­si­bil­i­ties would be to see how best HDC and the Min­istry of Hous­ing can get fund­ed to ramp up the hous­ing stock mar­ket for the Min­istry of Hous­ing and by ex­ten­sion, HDC, and by ex­ten­sion, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause there’s a high de­mand for hous­ing through­out Trinidad present­ly, that we re­al­ly have to fast-track the con­struc­tion of hous­es.”