On Friday, we took you inside the House of Representatives meeting for all the bills, debates, and other matters of public interest. And at the start of the meeting, Leader of the Opposition, Shyne Barrow, posed two questions to the ministers. While we showed you Kareem Musa's answer to the first one last week, the second question was directed at Julius Espat, and Barrow asked him to reveal who had been given the contract to build $15 million low-income houses and if the contract was put to tender.
Here is a snippet of Espat's response.
Julius Espat, Minister of Housing
"Presently, 120-121 contractors have been registered, of those 121, 81 contractors of that 121 have built homes under the low income project. That is separate from the contractors that are building roads, that is separate from the contractors that are building bridges, that is separate that the specific technicians that do other work, this is specifically, as your question referred to, the contractors that are building the low income houses. So, then we went a step ahead. I can give you a copy also, member from Mesop, we did a procurement notice in the newspapers, on our social media platform, on our website, Mr Vaughn Gill have been also voicing these procurement notices on the best TV and radio station in the country, Vibes, congratulations Vibes, and this is the procurement notice for tendering of the houses so the ministry designed the project, the ministry did the construction documents for the project, the ministry prepared the bill of confidence for the project and the engineers, and architects and technicians at the ministry established the basic rates, we went out and we asked any single entity country wide to bid on the houses to see if they can build it for less than we have been building it for, not a single person submitted a bid less than we have been able to build it for, in fact let me clarify, not a single person tried to compete with the cost we have been building it for."
