Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

?Every day is a chal­lenge, says Calder Hart. The ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), Hart fi­nal­ly broke his si­lence last Thurs­day in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, nine months af­ter the start of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor. Hart was at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain where the Sun­day Guardian was tak­en on a guid­ed tour of the fa­cil­i­ty. Look­ing on as Chi­nese work­ers were busi­ly pol­ish­ing wood fix­tures and fit­tings in the main the­atre, Hart said the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry had be­come a test on his dai­ly life. "The en­tire sit­u­a­tion has been very chal­leng­ing for me. Every day is a chal­lenge, but I have to do what it is I have to do."

Re­fer­ring to sacked Trade Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Hart said, "I do not know why he is do­ing what he is do­ing, but we are go­ing to con­tin­ue do­ing our work here. I have ab­solute­ly no idea why he is do­ing this..." Row­ley was fired from Cab­i­net last year by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning for what was de­scribed as "wa­jang be­hav­iour." Row­ley had raised ob­jec­tions to the con­struc­tion of a 60-room ho­tel at the acad­e­my and to cer­tain as­pects of the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott. Row­ley has main­tained that the orig­i­nal de­sign for the acad­e­my did not in­clude a ho­tel and ex­pressed shock over the con­struc­tion of the build­ing. The is­sues raised by Row­ley sparked wide­spread con­tro­ver­sy with sev­er­al sec­tors of the so­ci­ety call­ing for a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott. In­stead, an in­quiry in­to the op­er­a­tions of the con­struc­tion sec­tor com­menced in Jan­u­ary, but has since been halt­ed.

The acad­e­my, which stands at US$60 mil­lion is be­ing con­struct­ed by Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny. Hart said he was obliv­i­ous over what sparked the con­tro­ver­sy be­tween him­self and Row­ley. He in­di­cat­ed, though, that his aim was to com­plete the man­date he was giv­en. As­sur­ing that the acad­e­my will be com­plet­ed in time for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing next month, Hart said, "They have re­ferred to this acad­e­my as a gal­vanised shed. "This the­atre has state of the art light­ing, a pow­er­ful sound sys­tem and a move­able stage...nowhere else has that in this coun­try. The roof alone for this build­ing is steel, alu­mini­um and stain­less steel. We were giv­en a man­date and we have to fin­ish our work. If we don't do our work they will win and we can­not al­low that to hap­pen. We have work to do and we are get­ting the jobs done." The acad­e­my is ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over to Gov­ern­ment on No­vem­ber 9.

(Re­port­ing by Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford)