Fran­cis Joseph

The probe in­to the con­tro­ver­sial Cleaver Heights hous­ing project by the John Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry is now dead. It can be res­ur­rect­ed, but it will not be done by the Uff En­quiry.

This was re­vealed by Uff yes­ter­day, dur­ing a news con­fer­ence called at Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, to deal with the al­le­ga­tions that his in­quiry was op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly, and that there had been a de­lay in the hear­ing of the Cleaver Heights mat­ter.

This was just an­oth­er spoke in the wheel for the com­mis­sion, which was ap­point­ed 12 months ago. Com­mis­sion­er Is­rael Khan, SC, stepped down last month af­ter he got in­to a heat­ed clash with Calder Hart, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Co (Ude­cott). Com­mis­sion­er Ken­neth Sir­ju stepped down last week, af­ter al­le­ga­tions that he and/or his com­pa­ny had ties with NH (In­ter­na­tion­al), the firm con­tract­ed to con­struct the Cleaver Heights hous­es. Al­though he re­cused him­self, Sir­ju de­nied the al­le­ga­tions. The Uff com­mis­sion was ap­point­ed on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2008, and ex­tend­ed on De­cem­ber 10, 2008, to probe state-owned Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

Uff told the me­dia yes­ter­day that it came to his at­ten­tion on Sat­ur­day, while in Eng­land, that his com­mis­sion was not gazetted, as re­quired by law un­der the Com­mis­sions of En­quiry Act. He said oth­ers found out a day or two be­fore. He could not say what events led to the dis­cov­ery of the omis­sion.

As far as Uff was con­cerned, this was a for­mal­i­ty which could be cured at any time. But he said the opin­ion of most the lawyers in the in­quiry were, that un­less and un­til the in­quiry was gazetted, the com­mis­sion could not take ef­fect un­der the Act, and there­fore the pow­ers pro­vid­ed by the Act were not avail­able. "If and when ac­tion is tak­en to reg­u­larise the in­quiry, it is sug­gest­ed that pub­li­ca­tion in the gazette at that stage will not have re­stro­spec­tive ef­fect and that a val­i­dat­ing statute will be nec­es­sary," Uff said. He said the tim­ing of the rev­e­la­tion of the de­fect did not both­er him, nor could be say it was a de­lib­er­ate act.

Uff said the com­mis­sion heard ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions over eight weeks. He said the com­mis­sion­ers were plan­ning to hear ev­i­dence this week about the Cleaver Heights project. This probe would have dealt with de­fec­tive and de­layed work at Cleaver Heights. He al­so not­ed that the terms of ref­er­ence for the com­mis­sion, dat­ed May 21, were not gazetted. Uff said a fresh com­mis­sion would have to deal with this mat­ter.

"If a fresh com­mis­sion is to be is­sued, de­ci­sions will have to be tak­en as to who should be ap­point­ed as com­mis­sion­ers, and those com­mis­sion­ers will have to de­cide whether they will ac­cept the ap­point­ment," he said. Uff said even if the in­quiry was deemed il­le­gal by it not be­ing gazetted, it re­mained valid un­der the com­mon law as an ad hoc in­quiry. Uff ex­pects the first part of the re­port to be ready to be de­liv­ered to the Pres­i­dent with­in four to six weeks, with the fi­nal part a month lat­er. He point­ed out that the par­ties had spent a lot of mon­ey prepar­ing for this in­quiry and they ex­pect­ed a con­clu­sion.