Fran­cis Joseph

Pro­fes­sor John Uff has promised, be­fore East­er, to de­liv­er the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott), and the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project.

In re­sponse to a T&T Guardian e-mail yes­ter­day, Uff, who is in Lon­don, said the com­mis­sion­ers could not meet the Feb­ru­ary 28 dead­line be­cause of late sub­mis­sions. Uff, who chaired the com­mis­sion of en­quiry, al­so wel­comed last Fri­day's judg­ment by Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, who dis­missed a ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion brought by Ude­cott against the com­mis­sion­ers. The full text of the e-mail reads: "The Com­mis­sion­ers of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor note and wel­come the judg­ment de­liv­ered on Fri­day 5 March 2010, dis­miss­ing claims of ap­par­ent bias by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott). "The Re­port of the Com­mis­sion­ers is now at an ad­vanced stage of prepa­ra­tion. How­ev­er, the fi­nal writ­ten sub­mis­sions of UDe­COTT were re­ceived on­ly on March 1, 2010. In ad­di­tion, the fi­nal state­ment of the Ho­n­ourable Colm Im­bert, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, on the Cleaver Heights Hous­ing Project which was re­ceived on 26 Feb­ru­ary 2010, has made it nec­es­sary to in­vite fur­ther com­ment on new mat­ters raised. "The Com­mis­sion has writ­ten to His Ex­cel­len­cy, the Pres­i­dent, to in­form him that, as a re­sult of late de­liv­ery of fi­nal sub­mis­sions, a fur­ther ex­ten­sion to the Com­mis­sion­ers' pro­gramme will be need­ed. How­ev­er, it re­mains the Com­mis­sion­ers' in­ten­tion to com­plete their re­port and to de­liv­er it to His Ex­cel­len­cy, the Pres­i­dent, as soon as pos­si­ble."

This was the third ex­ten­sion be­ing sought by the com­mis­sion from the Pres­i­dent. On Sep­tem­ber 9, 2008, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards ap­point­ed four peo­ple as com­mis­sion­ers to in­quire in­to cer­tain mat­ters in re­la­tion to the con­struc­tion sec­tor. The com­mis­sion be­gan sit­ting and heard open­ing state­ments on Jan­u­ary 12, 2009, and had, up to Sep­tem­ber, held three sets of hear­ings dur­ing the course of which a sub­stan­tial amount of in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived by the com­mis­sion­ers by way of writ­ten state­ments, oral tes­ti­mo­ny un­der oath, and round-ta­ble dis­cus­sions, on some eight items of the terms of ref­er­ence. Days be­fore the start of the fi­nal set of hear­ings on Sep­tem­ber 7, it was dis­cov­ered that the com­mis­sion had not been gazetted as is re­quired by Sec­tion 15 of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2008, when the com­mis­sion was es­tab­lished.�As a re­sult, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie went to Par­lia­ment and got both Hous­es to pass the Val­i­da­tion Act, and which was as­sent­ed to on No­vem­ber 3. This gave the com­mis­sion a retroac­tive ef­fect, mean­ing that all the ev­i­dence tak­en be­fore the er­ror was dis­cov­ered, was still valid.

The Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed for­mer Ap­peal Court judge, An­tho­ny Lucky, to in­ves­ti­gate why the re­port was not gazetted. He sub­mit­ted his fi­nal re­port to the AG, but noth­ing has been heard about it again. The fourth and fi­nal phase end­ed on De­cem­ber 8, 2009, with chair­man John Uff, QC, promis­ing to pro­duce his re­port by the end of Feb­ru­ary 2010. There was al­so an un­der­tak­ing from the com­mis­sion that the re­port would not be hand­ed over to the Pres­i­dent un­til judg­ment was giv­en in the ju­di­cial re­view case. So far, Ude­cott has not ap­pealed Dean-Ar­mor­er's judg­ment.