Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said his worst fears about the award of con­struc­tion con­tracts ma­te­ri­alised yes­ter­day with the pub­li­ca­tion of re­ports which al­lege that there are fam­i­ly links be­tween Ude­cott chair­man Calder Hart and a Malaysian com­pa­ny.

"I had the Prime Min­is­ter and Im­bert say­ing in Hansard that I am ob­sessed with Ude­cott and, of course, I am ob­sessed with Ude­cott," Row­ley said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. "If this is what is hap­pen­ing at Ude­cott, then I am sup­posed to be ob­sessed with it," he said. Row­ley was re­spond­ing to doc­u­ments al­leged­ly ob­tained from Malaysia by mem­bers of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, which al­lege that fam­i­ly ties ex­ist be­tween Hart's wife, Sher­rine, and at least one of the di­rec­tors of CH De­vel­op­ment and Con­struc­tion Ltd, which re­ceived mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts from Ude­cott, a state-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny. "Rather than get the re­port of the en­quiry (in­to Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor) to say in a civilised way what has hap­pened and what we should do, we have peo­ple, in their de­fence of wrong-do­ing, dis­miss­ing the ev­i­dence (and) dam­ag­ing the peo­ple who stand up in de­fi­ance of this and that is where we are at and we have a long way to go still," Row­ley said. "The Prime Min­is­ter has made a very clear de­ci­sion that he is go­ing to pro­tect and de­fend Mr Hart at any cost and that is his de­ci­sion to make," he added.

While nei­ther Hart nor Ude­cott at­tempt­ed to clar­i­fy the re­ports yes­ter­day, the Malaysian com­pa­ny Sun­way is­sued a state­ment in which it said it "100 per cent cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly re­futes ALL al­le­ga­tions re­gard­ing any form of im­prop­er busi­ness con­duct with Ude­cott and any of its em­ploy­ers, man­agers or board mem­bers." Sun­way said its cat­e­gor­i­cal refu­ta­tion "in­cludes lu­di­crous al­le­ga­tions of any form what­so­ev­er of an im­prop­er re­la­tion­ship with the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ude­cott or any mem­bers of his fam­i­ly." But Row­ley said he found the en­tire episode to be "quite de­press­ing be­cause I lived through the O'Hal­laron and Pre­vatt ac­cu­sa­tions (of cor­rup­tion) as a mem­ber of the PNM," Row­ley said. He said: "I am now hav­ing to live through this. And for a per­son who gave a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of my work­ing life to­wards the PNM in pub­lic ser­vice, I nev­er ex­pect­ed the PNM to be de­fend­ing this kind of thing. "And by PNM there, I mean of­fice-hold­ers, per­sons who are in a po­si­tions to act and who are fail­ing to act, for their own rea­sons and are stain­ing the par­ty by their ac­tions or in­ac­tions."

Row­ley said Hart should have been fired from hold­ing the po­si­tion of Ude­cott chair­man. Row­ley stressed that "the laws and reg­u­la­tions" would in­di­cate that the Cana­di­an-born Hart should be re­moved and a prop­er crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion should have been go­ing on "in­to what is go­ing on at Ude­cott." He said: "I do not ac­cept any po­si­tion from per­sons who are de­fend­ing him (Hart) and his as­so­ciates that one has to wait on a com­mis­sion of en­quiry to pro­ceed to find out what hap­pened with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey." Row­ley was fired by Man­ning af­ter he voiced fears and se­ri­ous con­cerns about the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott.

?Flash­back

?On Oc­to­ber 15 last year dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence Colm Im­bert, Min­is­ter of Works, had the fol­low­ing to say about al­leged links be­tween Hart and CH De­vel­op­ment al­so called Sun­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd: "There is ab­solute­ly no ev­i­dence that the head of Sun­way is the broth­er-in-law of Calder Hart. Where did you get that in­for­ma­tion? No­body has al­leged that the head of Sun­way is the broth­er-in-law of Mr Hart."