Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Peo­ple found com­mit­ting crimes in "cut­ting cor­ners" at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) will be made to do time in jail, prime min­is­te­r­i­al-hope­ful Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed that "none shall es­cape." She said: "I do not care who you are, from high­est to the low­est, we will go af­ter you...I make no bones about that."

Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ap­peared to be "a stranger to the truth," af­ter he stat­ed that "some cor­ners were cut" at Ude­cott to get things done quick­ly. She pro­vid­ed a list of ten Ude­cott projects and showed that each project was over­run in cost, out­side of bud­get and failed to be de­liv­ered on sched­ule. ?

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"Ten Ude­cott projects–Every sin­gle one on a cost over­run, out­side of bud­get and out­side of time," she said. "To say that you had these com­pa­nies and you were...cut­ting cor­ners to get it done quick­ly, here is the lie to that." Per­sad-Bisses­sar was speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3 last night with host Shelly Dass-Clarke af­ter Man­ning's pre-record­ed tele­vi­sion in­ter­view was aired. She was of­fer­ing re­but­tals and com­ments to state­ments Man­ning made in his hour-long tele­vi­sion seg­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship po­lit­i­cal par­ty would launch im­me­di­ate and fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Ude­cott. Asked if she would launch a witch-hunt in­to the PNM, if the part­ner­ship wins the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would launch a "witch-hunt for crim­i­nals."

"What would we do with Ude­cott?...As with many oth­er of these mega com­pa­nies that gov­ern­ment has set up, it is clear that we will need to go in there and in­ves­ti­gate," she said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so drew ref­er­ence to Man­ning's state­ment about the church on the Heights of Gua­napo. "I am not con­vinced by any­thing he has said...Well, this is so pre­pos­ter­ous...Two new things have come out from Mr Man­ning...maybe it was Mr Hart in his per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty...and then, sec­ond­ly, he says 'PM' means project man­ag­er. Wow," she said. "Who is this project man­ag­er then? Is there a project man­ag­er for build­ing this church? Will that 'PM' come for­ward? Mr Man­ning has been known for speak­ing in the third per­son...we will ask Mr Man­ning to ask the 'PM' whether he has an in­volve­ment in this church?"