Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

At least one Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (Ude­cott) project in San Fer­nan­do is be­ing con­struct­ed with­out writ­ten ap­proval from the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, the cor­po­ra­tion's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mar­lene Coudray has said. Coudray in­di­cat­ed that work was be­ing done at Ude­cott's Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in San Fer­nan­do with the cor­po­ra­tion's per­mis­sion.

She added that the build­ing did not ap­pear to be con­struct­ed il­le­gal­ly.

"We sim­ply have a round ta­ble with all the play­ers in terms of what the build­ing re­quire­ments of the cor­po­ra­tion are and we work with them in the con­struc­tion pe­ri­od," Coudray said, dur­ing an in­ter­view af­ter Par­lia­ment's Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.

She added that con­struc­tion at an­oth­er Ude­cott project, the Chancery Lane Com­plex, was done with­out ap­proval from the cor­po­ra­tion. "Well, they (Ude­cott) came in and they start­ed to work and we point­ed out to that you need the city cor­po­ra­tion's ap­proval to do it and could you come around the ta­ble with us and let us give you the guide­lines...And they came and that was about four years ago," Coudray said.

She said that the cor­po­ra­tion in­formed the con­trac­tor at the Chancery Lane Com­plex that there were "cer­tain un­der­ground in­stal­la­tions that they might not have been aware" about.

"We called them in and had a meet­ing with T&TEC every­body at the city cor­po­ra­tion and they have been work­ing with us since," Coudray said. (KM)