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Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day de­fend­ed a new Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) pol­i­cy, which has in­tro­duced a five per cent fee on the trans­fer of prop­er­ties with­in fam­i­lies and a ten per cent fee on trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing the sale of its prop­er­ties.

Her de­fence came hours af­ter for­mer Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell post­ed a doc­u­ment an­nounc­ing the new pol­i­cy on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, and slammed the Gov­ern­ment for the change. But even while Per­sad-Bisses­sar was de­fend­ing the HDC move, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee claimed to have no knowl­edge of the pol­i­cy and launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.