Richard Lord

The Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing it­self two weeks to re­con­sti­tute the board of di­rec­tors of State-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott).

Well-placed sources made this rev­e­la­tion last night, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment sacked the four re­main­ing mem­bers of the old Calder Hart-led board. The sources said a full board should be in place, un­der Chair Jear­lean John, with­in the next fort­night. John was ap­point­ed last month af­ter a hasty res­ig­na­tion by the con­tro­ver­sial Hart. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie ear­li­er yes­ter­day laid the bulky re­port of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor and Ude­cott in the Sen­ate.

Je­re­mie told leg­is­la­tors the board would be re­placed, with on­ly the re­cent­ly ap­point­ed chair­man Jear­lean John be­ing re­tained. Je­re­mie said Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning yes­ter­day is­sued the di­rec­tive, fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Uff re­port. The sacked di­rec­tors are vice-chair­man Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, Sen­a­tor Michael An­nisette, Wen­dell Dot­tin and An­tho­ny Cher­ry. Cab­i­net yes­ter­day met in spe­cial ses­sion, at which the Uff re­port was dis­cussed at length. "As a re­sult, Mr Pres­i­dent, Cab­i­net will now move to re­con­sti­tute the board of di­rec­tors of Ude­cott," Je­re­mie told the Sen­ate, ex­plain­ing that John would be kept in the chair.

"The ex­ist­ing mem­bers have been thanked for their ser­vices...A re­con­sti­tut­ed board should be in place in short or­der," he said.

The long-await­ed re­port slammed Ude­cott on sev­er­al pub­lic projects, in­clud­ing the thorny Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs tow­ers in Port-of-Spain.

The Uff team rec­om­mend­ed that that mat­ter be turned over to the po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion. That mat­ter per­tains to the award of a $368 mil­lion con­tract to CH De­vel­op­ment, sub­se­quent­ly re­named Sun­way Con­struc­tion.

The Uff Com­mis­sion al­so rec­om­mend­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cer­tain pack­ages of the con­tract for con­struc­tion of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um i Tarou­ba.

Among oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions is that there be an au­dit in­to the con­duct of all Ude­cott's se­nior staff and di­rec­tors in the pe­ri­od 2004 to 2009, as to their in­volve­ment in er­rors and omis­sions con­cern­ing the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um project. The re­port list­ed 91 firm and di­rect rec­om­men­da­tions. Ude­cott di­rec­tors have re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing and had re­fused to re­sign, de­spite sev­er­al re­quests from the po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion and oth­er crit­ics. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials al­so strong­ly sup­port­ed the re­ten­tion of the di­rec­tors, say­ing they had done noth­ing wrong.