Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde has said Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning will not be en­gaged in cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties at a con­tro­ver­sial church in the Heights of Gua­napo be­cause his op­po­nents would have him locked up.

When asked whether she had made checks in­to al­le­ga­tions about the pri­vate church be­ing linked to the State-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) that fell un­der her min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio, Dick-Forde said: "No, well, I do not even know what is the con­tro­ver­sy. I do not know what the con­tro­ver­sy is." Af­ter be­ing in­formed that res­i­dents in the area claimed to have seen Man­ning make re­peat­ed vis­its to the church, Dick-Forde re­spond­ed: "Ent the Prime Min­is­ter has said that he is a Chris­t­ian? What is the prob­lem?"

When told that it was al­leged that the Prime Min­is­ter had in­ter­ests in the church, Dick-Forde said: "Why would you reach there be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter has been on-site?" She added that she was un­aware that Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er made al­le­ga­tions that the church was be­ing built on state lands. "From my knowl­edge of my Prime Min­is­ter is that he does every­thing prop­er­ly and cor­rect­ly be­cause if he does not all these peo­ple who are op­po­nents to him would have had him locked up a long time.

"He is a very prop­er per­son and any­thing he is do­ing would have been above board," Dick-Forde said. "The onus is there­fore on Mr Warn­er to prove if what he says is so... The bur­den of proof is on him," she added. Dick-Forde agreed to be in­ter­viewed by the T&T Guardian af­ter yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the Sen­ate. She main­tained there was no con­cern about al­le­ga­tions the work be­ing done on the church by Chi­nese im­mi­grant work­ers from the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny, which Ude­cott con­tract­ed.