Richard Lord

?One of the coun­try's largest busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is ac­cus­ing the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) of try­ing to frus­trate the com­ple­tion of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor. In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said: "The cham­ber con­sid­ers this cur­rent state of af­fairs to be an af­front to the na­tion and to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able." The cham­ber has called on the Gov­ern­ment to take "swift and ef­fec­tive ac­tion" to "re­solve this un­for­tu­nate im­passe." The cham­ber said over the past few weeks it had "ob­served with amaze­ment and con­ster­na­tion, the un­fold­ing saga of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry," which in­clud­ed the Gov­ern­ment's at­tempt to val­i­date the work of the com­mis­sion and the pub­lic state­ments of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on the mat­ter. The cham­ber not­ed that con­sid­er­able tax­pay­er re­sources have been used in the fi­nanc­ing the probe, which be­gan in Jan­u­ary and is yet to be com­plet­ed.

It said it was "im­per­a­tive" that the work of the com­mis­sion be al­lowed to be com­plet­ed and a time­ly re­port be pre­sent­ed to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. The cham­ber al­so said the pub­lic's right to this in­for­ma­tion must be un­fet­tered. "Any fur­ther course of ac­tion in­di­cat­ed by the com­mis­sion's re­port must be al­lowed to take ef­fect ex­pe­di­tious­ly," the cham­ber said.

It said in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance, prin­ci­ples which the Gov­ern­ment es­pous­es, the Patrick Man­ning-led ad­min­is­tra­tion must act now to re­solve this sit­u­a­tion. And Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma) Gre­go­ry Aboud said last night his or­gan­i­sa­tion had been "star­tled" by how rapid de­vel­op­ments in the Ude­cott mat­ter have been brought to the na­tion's at­ten­tion. Aboud said cit­i­zens from a wide cross-sec­tion of the so­ci­ety had ex­pressed con­cern "about the near col­lapse of the in­quiry in­to Ude­cott."

"We feel very strong­ly that the cur­rent episode in­volv­ing Ude­cott is strain­ing the frag­ile trust that still ex­ists in our coun­try and is call­ing in­to ques­tion the cred­i­bil­i­ty of those whose cred­i­bil­i­ty had nev­er be­fore been doubt­ed," Aboud said. "The ul­ti­mate goal of the mo­ment is the restora­tion of trust among all cit­i­zens with re­spect to the ex­pen­di­ture on Ude­cott and the in­quiry it­self." He said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and a wide cross-sec­tion of the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty spoke with one voice on this is­sue. The com­mis­sion was ap­point­ed last year by Pres­i­dent Richards on the ad­vice of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. The first round of hear­ings be­gan at the Win­sure Build­ing, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain in Jan­u­ary. There have been two fur­ther round of pub­lic hear­ings. A fourth was due to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 7, when com­mis­sion chair­man John Uff said the com­mis­sion was be­ing sus­pend­ed in­def­i­nite­ly be­cause a le­gal re­quire­ment to pub­lish the hold­ing of the Com­mis­sion in the Gazette was not ho­n­oured. Ude­cott has al­so ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion in the High Court against the con­tin­u­a­tion of the in­quiry.