Senior Investigative Reporter
Land and Legal Affairs Minister Saddam Hosein says that, in the run-up to the 2025 general election, Palo Seco Agricultural Enterprises Limited (PSAEL) was used to pave roads and build box drains.
Hosein was speaking during a meeting of Parliament’s Standing Finance Committee on his ministry’s expenditure.
Opposition MP Stuart Young questioned the $150 million allocation to PSAEL in the 2027 budget. The company was moved to Hosein’s ministry by the Prime Minister during a recent Cabinet reshuffle.
Hosein said that under the previous administration, PSAEL had one major infrastructure project, divided into two phases and carried out across Trinidad.
“The project scope was indicated for agricultural access roads, which then morphed into doing box drain and road paving in residential areas in the lead-up to the general election,” Hosein said.
“We have had a chairman of this particular PSAEL … who was hand-selecting contractors, telling them, ‘Go and do work.’ There was no procurement, there was no contract, and now we are being sued to pay these people,” he added.
Hosein said the allocation would cover expenditure under the project’s first and second phases.
“And I’ll tell you, one of your former colleagues, on the Friday before the general election, was bullying public servants at the ministry to release $40 million under this particular project,” Hosein said.
“The Friday before the general election, the public servants had to stop him because when they verified the projects, the projects were either incomplete, the projects may not have started, and there were several issues.”
He said the allocation would cover work certified as completed.
Young responded that, in the run-up to the 2015 general election under the UNC administration, leases were being executed at the Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA) on election eve.
Hosein countered with allegations that, in the run-up to last year’s general election, the CDA executed leases with an attorney who had been appointed to a State board by the PNM government.
Hosein also alleged that corruption at the Land Settlement Agency (LSA) had slowed the agency’s work.
He was responding to questions from Diego Martin North/East MP Colm Imbert, who asked why several agencies had significantly underspent in fiscal 2026.
Imbert cited the Land for the Landless programme, which he said had been allocated $11 million but recorded expenditure of just $3 million.
“That one stall for sure,” Imbert said.
Hosein alleged that corruption at the LSA had slowed its operations.
“Mr Chairman, when we went into the LSA, we had several issues with respect to personnel that was employed at the LSA that were planted there by the former administration. Mr Chairman, we had slowed down the work of the LSA simply because the work was being frustrated by the massive amount of corruption that was exposed at the LSA,” Hosein said.
He read from a list of names he alleged had been recommended by PNM MPs, including one by Imbert.
Imbert protested, saying the person named had been employed by the LSA for decades and could not have been recommended by him.
Committee chairman Jagdeo Singh intervened to restore order.
