Pe­ter Bal­roop

?The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ude­cott) board, head­ed by Calder Hart, should be fired, and an­oth­er board put in place, in or­der to pro­tect the pub­lic's in­ter­est, so there is no longer any threat to the Uff Com­mis­sion com­plet­ing its de­lib­er­a­tions and pub­lish­ing a re­port. Prof John Uff heads the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion in­dus­try in T&T. These com­ments by three promi­nent at­tor­neys came yes­ter­day, in the wake of Fri­day's de­vel­op­ment in the Port-of-Spain High Court. Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and at­tor­neys for Ude­cott re­sult­ed in an agree­ment be­fore Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er that ef­fec­tive­ly saw the Uff Com­mis­sion free to re­sume sit­tings. Hear­ings be­fore the com­mis­sion had been put on hold, while Ude­cott ar­gued a ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter over the de­ci­sion by Prof Uff to con­tin­ue hear­ings al­though the in­quiry was not gazetted. Lawyers for Ude­cott, the com­mis­sion and Je­re­mie's le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive, ap­peared be­fore Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er on Fri­day and it was agreed that hear­ings would be al­lowed to re­sume, but the com­mis­sion would give Ude­cott 28 days' no­tice, should it de­cide to pro­ceed with fur­ther hear­ings or pub­lish any part of its re­port.

Yes­ter­day, Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, said in a way it was "in­evitable" that the in­quiry would have been al­lowed to pro­ceed. She said it was a shame, though, that it seemed hear­ings would be com­plet­ed and a re­port sub­mit­ted three or four months lat­er than Uff orig­i­nal­ly pre­dict­ed. See­ta­hal said it would be two years at least, af­ter the ini­tial com­plaints about Ude­cott by for­mer Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and talk of set­ting up the com­mis­sion, that the coun­try would see Uff's re­port. She was sure that a re­port would even­tu­al­ly emerge. See­ta­hal was asked to com­ment on spec­u­la­tion that Ude­cott would like­ly use the agreed 28-day no­tice to tie up the pub­li­ca­tion of a re­port in the courts. "If Gov­ern­ment per­mits a 100 per cent-owned com­pa­ny to thwart its will in this ob­vi­ous way, then we will know that Gov­ern­ment has been col­lud­ing with Ude­cott all along." She said it was a "sim­ple mat­ter" for the gov­ern­ment to fire the Ude­cott board and if it al­lowed Ude­cott to stall the com­mis­sion's work, then it was ob­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment was try­ing "to trick" the na­tion. "The board of Ude­cott can­not func­tion prop­er­ly out­side the will of the gov­ern­ment, see­ing as the gov­ern­ment has the op­tion to fire the board at any time."

Khan de­tests use of pub­lic funds

For­mer Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry mem­ber, Is­rael Khan, SC, who re­signed af­ter Ude­cott claimed he was bi­ased against the com­pa­ny and its chair­man, told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that Ude­cott had every right to de­fend it­self in court. "Ude­cott has a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to go to a court of law and file for ju­di­cial re­view, on the grounds that com­mis­sion­ers were bi­ased against Ude­cott and Calder Hart. "And no­body should be­grudge them that right, be­cause that is the price we have to pay for democ­ra­cy and the rule of law. "The court grant­ed them leave for ju­di­cial re­view, then the court be­lieves they have a good case to ar­gue. "What I de­test is Calder Hart, in his ca­pac­i­ty as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, is us­ing pub­lic funds to de­fend him­self in a court of law. "Calder Hart, as Ude­cott chair­man, must be sep­a­rate from Calder Hart the in­di­vid­ual, and we have spent mil­lions on the Uff Com­mis­sion al­ready," said Khan. He added that he was very hap­py the com­mis­sion could now pro­ceed with prepar­ing its re­port, and if nec­es­sary restart hear­ings.

Ma­haraj: Ude­cott could still frus­trate in­quiry

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, be­lieves the lat­est le­gal twist is not to­tal­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry. As he put it: "It is not good enough for it to be said that the or­der was va­cat­ed and the in­quiry would restart. "Noth­ing would pre­vent Ude­cott from tak­ing the same point and go­ing back to the court to frus­trate the in­quiry. "Noth­ing pre­vents Ude­cott from try­ing to pre­vent the re­port from be­ing pub­lished." Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, this le­gal de­vel­op­ment was yet an­oth­er "smart­man thing" be­ing per­pe­trat­ed on the pop­u­lace. He called for the board to be re­moved. "The peo­ple must not ac­cept any­thing less. "The Ude­cott board must re­sign or be fired and a new pol­i­cy adopt­ed, so there will be no at­tempt to pre­vent the in­quiry at a lat­er stage or nul­li­fy the re­port of the com­mis­sion. "If Calder Hart wants to take per­son­al ac­tion, let him pay from his own pock­et, not use tax­pay­ers' mon­ey."