?Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Emi­ly Dick-Forde says cit­i­zens of this coun­try should be ashamed be­cause of the man­ner in which its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart was forced to re­sign last week­end.

The Plan­ning, Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter was ques­tioned by re­porters dur­ing yes­ter­day Sen­ate tea break in the Par­lia­ment Build­ing. She was first asked to re­spond to pub­lic calls for her to now re­sign over the Ude­cott mat­ter. "Oh. There are calls for me to step down? To­tal­ly un­aware of them," she said. Pressed for fur­ther com­ment, Dick-Forde in­sist­ed that she was not aware of the calls and was un­able to re­spond. She lat­er said when she was made aware of the calls she would lis­ten to what the peo­ple said.

Dick-Forde said it would not be the first time such calls would have been made. Asked about Hart's res­ig­na­tion, Dick-Forde said: "Well, cer­tain­ly Mr Hart's res­ig­na­tion would have been a sur­prise but it al­so would not have been be­cause I think if any of you, as hu­man be­ings, would have been hound­ed and treat­ed the way he has been, I think you all would un­der­stand." She not­ed that res­ig­na­tions formed part of "nor­mal gov­er­nance, but I think in the cir­cum­stances, we in Trinidad and To­ba­go should be very ashamed for what has hap­pened–a hu­man be­ing has been treat­ed very, very bad­ly by us." Asked about the calls for the re­moval of the re­main­der of the Ude­cott board, which in­clud­ed Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre pres­i­dent, Sen­a­tor Michael An­nisette, Dick-Forde said: "We'll deal with that in time. Mr An­nisette has an­swered you all very ap­pro­pri­ate­ly as far as I am con­cerned."