Questions raised over ‘inside deal’ for NHDT fill

(CNS): A number of North Side residents have accused the National Housing Development Trust Board of making ‘inside deals’ in relation to soil and marl taken from the site of the new district project after several people witnessed the fill being delivered to land owned by the chairman of the board, Geoffry Ebanks, as well as to his father’s farm.

CNS was contacted by several district residents concerned that this fill, which belongs to the Housing Trust, might have been sold or even given to the chair outside the usual procurement process.

Two weeks ago CNS sent several questions to the Housing Trust, the planning ministry, which has responsibility for the NHDT, and the minister, Jay Ebanks, who is also the constituency MP.

We received an acknowledgment from a government official and followed up on the request for information twice, but we have received no explanation for the movement of the soil and marl from the site, which is public property estimated to be worth several thousand dollars.

While the fill may have been sold, neither the ministry nor the NHDT has responded to our questions about the process by which such a transaction could have been conducted, despite our persistent inquiries.

The former MP for the district and former Public Accounts Committee chairman, Ezzard Miller, said that he does not believe the chair of the NHDT board would be an appropriate person to have acquired the fill outside of a rigorous and transparent process.

Miller told CNS that he had also heard from residents in North Side who had seen the movement of the soil and marl from the site to what was believed to be the chairman’s property and to Willie’s Farm, which is owned by his father. He, himself, had conducted a search at the Land Registry to check the ownership of the land and confirmed those suspicions.

“It was reported to me that the fill and been removed from the Housing Trust site and deposited on land owned by the board chairman and on his father’s farm,” Miller said. “As a result I went to check the ownership of the land where it had ended up. The fill is an asset of the Housing Trust. If it was sold to the board chair there should have been a transparent process surrounding that in which the rest of the board would have approved the sale and ensure it was at market value.”

The site was cleared earlier this year to make room for the first affordable housing project in the district. The clearance of the trees and bush was the subject of a recent ministry press release, as the green waste had been donated to Beacon Farms, a non-profit organisation in the district that provides agricultural jobs for Caymanians recovering from addiction.

According to the release, the goal was to allow the farm to compost all of the site’s green waste for other farmers, homeowners and members of the public. But there was no mention in the release about the soil and the fill from the same site.

Julio Ramos, the general manager of the NHDT, said the plan was for existing and future NHDT homeowners to have access to good quality soil for their backyard gardens from the waste generated from the housing development sites. But he said nothing about the top quality red-mold that was originally on the site but removed apparently by the chairman of the board.

Beacon Farms is one of a few agricultural sites that is composting, though there is no national programme, despite the country’s chronic lack of quality soil and a significant amount of green waste available. Beacon’s composting facility has the capacity to hold around 53 tonnes of material and uses industrial chipping and shredding machines to accelerate the process. 

“Partnering with NHDT to produce higher volumes of compost benefits agriculture and our community,” said Chief Operating Officer Sandy Urquhart. “Our programme of social entrepreneurship at Beacon Farms aligns well with NHDT’s mission to support people in need of assistance.”