Camille Clarke

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald has scoffed at al­le­ga­tions made by pres­i­dent of the Artists Coali­tion of T&T (ACTT), Rubadari Vic­tor, that it would cost $80 mil­lion to fix flaws at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa).

Mc­Don­ald spoke at a news con­fer­ence at the Com­mu­ni­ty Ed­u­ca­tion In­for­ma­tion and Train­ing Re­source Cen­tre at La Fan­tasie Road, St Ann's, yes­ter­day. The min­is­ter was ac­com­pa­nied by en­gi­neers from the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and Geni­var. She de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions which were made three days ago in a dai­ly news­pa­pers as mis­chie­vous, ir­re­spon­si­ble, and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed re­ports, un­leashed on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty by this or­gan­i­sa­tion known as ACTT. In ad­di­tion, Mc­Don­ald claimed Vic­tor was as­so­ci­at­ed with an or­gan­i­sa­tion called Jazz Al­liance that has ap­proached the man­age­ment com­mit­tee with a re­quest for rental of the fa­cil­i­ty's pub­lic au­di­to­ri­um.

"Would you re­quest the rental of a fa­cil­i­ty which has been de­scribed as sub-stan­dard with mas­sive de­sign flaws, work­man­ship, tech­ni­cal short­com­ings and sub-stan­dard ma­te­r­i­al?" she asked. "I dare say that not­ed chore­o­g­ra­phers such as Eu­gene Joseph, Alan Bal­four and Del­ton Frank would hard­ly have ex­posed their young charges to the type of dan­ger posed by a fa­cil­i­ty such as that re­port­ed in the me­dia." Mc­Don­ald said sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions were in at­ten­dance at the pro­posed phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture projects. She said at one con­sul­ta­tion, a pre­sen­ta­tion was made by Ude­cott on the con­cept and de­sign of the Port-of-Spain acad­e­my. "It is in­ter­est­ing to note that re­ports re­ceived from cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers, as well as the pro­duc­ers of the shows at NA­PA, have all been pos­i­tive," Mc­Don­ald stat­ed.

?Min­is­ter gives the facts

�2 The first ma­jor con­sul­ta­tion for NA­PA took place as far back as March 12, 1988.

�2 Con­tracts amount­ing to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion were award­ed to lo­cal sub­con­trac­tors for var­i­ous con­struc­tion el­e­ments.

�2 An es­ti­mat­ed 20,000 cu­bic me­tres of con­crete were laid in the foun­da­tion, each in­spect­ed and signed off by the en­gi­neer of record.

�2 All steel was test­ed.

�2 NA­PA stage is mod­eled af­ter world-class aca­d­e­m­ic fa­cil­i­ties in Baltics, Shang­hai and Chica­go.