For­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mikey Joseph says the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) de­ci­sion to with­draw $3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts ap­pears to be an at­tempt to con­tain fur­ther em­bar­rass­ment and re­store con­fi­dence in the pub­lic pro­cure­ment process.

The HDC can­celled the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise on Thurs­day through an in­ter­nal mem­o­ran­dum, two months af­ter the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) in­struct­ed the state agency to sus­pend the con­tract awards to 11 com­pa­nies pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the ten­der­ing process.

The con­tracts, which in­volve the con­struc­tion of 3,700 hous­ing units, came un­der scruti­ny af­ter the Op­po­si­tion raised con­cerns about the method used to award them. The Op­po­si­tion al­so called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, al­leg­ing that some of the 11 com­pa­nies were re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed.