Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning yes­ter­day for­mal­ly opened the US$78 mil­lion Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts Acad­e­my (North Cam­pus) de­scrib­ing it as "a mas­ter­piece." And in his strongest vote of con­fi­dence in the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart, Man­ning said the State-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny which man­ages many of Gov­ern­ment's bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion projects "is the in­stru­ment that the Gov­ern­ment is us­ing to bring about a new or­der in the con­struc­tion sec­tor." Man­ning said not with­stand­ing all the crit­i­cisms that con­tin­ue to be thrown at Ude­cott, "The Gov­ern­ment re­fus­es to be a part of the witch hunt."

He said he want­ed to pay spe­cial trib­ute to Ude­cott, its board and its man­age­ment and par­tic­u­lar­ly its Hart "for the tremen­dous work is con­tin­ues to do to de­vel­op­ment T&T." Man­ning al­so thanked his Cab­i­net and for­mer cab­i­net min­is­ters for their role in the es­tab­lish­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty. He said there were many in the coun­try who said such a fa­cil­i­ty would nev­er be con­struct­ed in T&T, but Ude­cott has made it hap­pen. Man­ning said the acad­e­my in north Trinidad and the one to be con­struct­ed in San Fer­nan­do are to cost the State about $820 mil­lion (US$130 mil­lion).

Man­ning said the stage at the acad­e­my was the on­ly one in the world de­signed for the na­tion­al in­stru­ment–the steel­pan. He added that the stage was three times larg­er than the one at the near­by Queen's hall, had 19 cur­tains and 439 lights. He said there was no sod turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the project be­cause of the lev­el of cyn­i­cism in the coun­try over the project. But in prais­ing Ude­cott and builders, the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group of Chi­na, Man­ning said he felt a great sense of pride that such a world class fa­cil­i­ty had in fact been de­liv­ered to the peo­ple of T&T. Man­ning said this coun­try's ap­pli­ca­tion for the patent to the steel­pan has now ad­vanced to the sta­tus of ap­pli­ca­tion pend­ing.

"The patent­ing of the steel­pan as an in­stru­ment to T&T is well on its way," Man­ning said to the cheers of the au­di­ence. Man­ning said Pres­i­dent's House and the Car­ni­val Cen­tre at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah were the next ma­jor projects to be un­der­tak­en by Ude­cott. He said by Sep­tem­ber of next year, the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to award ma­jor con­tracts for the con­struc­tion of six ma­jor high­ways across the coun­try. Man­ning lists oth­er pri­or­i­ties in the new fis­cal year as the con­struc­tion of de­sali­na­tion plants to en­sure wa­ter for all, elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and ICT.

Plan­ning Hous­ing and de­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Dick Forde said the de­liv­ery of acad­e­my was child­birth "with pain and pres­sure," but she was high in praise for Ude­cott for stick­ing to the task de­spite the crit­i­cisms and at­tacks and en­sur­ing de­liv­ery. Hart in his ad­dress said the project was com­plet­ed with­in time and bud­get. "We have cre­at­ed a fa­cil­i­ty of ex­cel­lence and set a new stan­dard for ex­cel­lence in the process," Hart added. Ude­cott is to host sev­er­al cul­tur­al events for the pub­lic in the com­ing months. And of­fi­cials of Shang­hai de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty was world class. So­ca artiste Neil 'Iw­er' George wel­comed the fa­cil­i­ty say­ing it was mon­ey well spent.