?Pro­fes­sor John Uff said yes­ter­day the pre­sen­ta­tion of his re­port in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor, was the end of a long saga of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry which he chaired.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia at the Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, chair­man Uff said he was break­ing with tra­di­tion by host­ing a news con­fer­ence just 90 min­utes af­ter hand­ing in his re­port to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at Pres­i­dent's House. The fol­low­ing is Uff's pre­pared state­ment to the me­dia (He field­ed ques­tions af­ter­wards): "I am pleased to say that the re­main­ing com­mis­sion­ers, Desmond Thorn­hill and my­self, de­liv­ered the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor, Trinidad & To­ba­go, to His Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent at 10 am to­day. "This brings to an end the long saga of this en­quiry which start­ed, so far as I am con­cerned, in Ju­ly 2008, was the sub­ject of meet­ings in Sep­tem­ber and De­cem­ber 2008 and of four hear­ing ses­sions be­tween Jan­u­ary 12 and De­cem­ber 9 2009. "The com­mis­sion as orig­i­nal­ly ap­point­ed had four mem­bers. The re­port was even­tu­al­ly com­piled by two of us who nev­er­the­less con­sti­tute a quo­rum in ac­cor­dance with the terms of our com­mis­sion. "While the press and pub­lic will have to wait for the re­port to be pub­lished by the Gov­ern­ment, I can on­ly ex­press the hope that, when pub­lished, you will find that it fair­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly deals with the many is­sues which have been raised be­fore us, in a bal­anced and un­bi­ased man­ner.

"As re­quired by our com­mis­sion, the re­port con­tains ex­ten­sive rec­om­men­da­tions re­lat­ing to the con­struc­tion in­dus­try in gen­er­al, to Ude­cott and oth­er Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and to the par­ties in­volved in the Cleaver Heights Hous­ing Project. "There are a to­tal of 9l rec­om­men­da­tions ad­dressed to the at­tain­ment of val­ue for mon­ey, de­liv­ery of high stan­dards of work­man­ship, free and fair com­pe­ti­tion and the main­te­nance of in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy in the pub­lic pro­cure­ment prac­tice. "I would like to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to pay trib­ute to many peo­ple whose con­tri­bu­tions have been es­sen­tial to keep­ing the show on the road. "First Ju­dith Gon­za­lez who took over as sec­re­tary be­fore the first work­ing ses­sion of the en­quiry and re­mained the fo­cal point for re­ceipt and dis­sem­i­na­tion of the many doc­u­ments and sub­mis­sions which came in­to the en­quiry from De­cem­ber 2008, the last be­ing re­ceived, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly from a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, on­ly 11 days ago. "She kept us all pro­vid­ed with the right doc­u­ments and man­aged the large team at the Win­sure Build­ing en­gaged in copy­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing the doc­u­ments. "We are grate­ful for her pa­tience and good hu­mour and that of all the back­room staff at the Win­sure Build­ing, in­clud­ing those who kept us fed and wa­tered through­out the nine weeks of hear­ings.

"We al­so ex­press our ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ex­pert and time­ly le­gal ad­vice and ser­vices pro­vid­ed by our team of coun­sel led by Seenath Jairam SC and ju­nior coun­sel Garvin Si­mon­ette, Ian Roach and Ker­wyn Gar­cia, in­struct­ed by Mar­vo Harp­er and Do­ril Ann La­m­ont. "Thanks are al­so due to Kath­leen Mo­hammed and the team of tran­scribers who pro­duced ac­cu­rate and time­ly tran­scripts of all the hear­ings. "I would like to thank all the par­ties who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the en­quiry. I am aware that many, in fact most par­tic­i­pants re­tained coun­sel or at­tor­neys at their own per­son­al costs, re­flect­ing the se­ri­ous in­ter­est which this en­quiry has gen­er­at­ed, not on­ly with­in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try but among groups and in­di­vid­u­als served by the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. "With­out their con­tri­bu­tion the en­quiry and our re­port would be the poor­er. "We would like to pay trib­ute to our col­league Ken­neth Sir­ju who sat with us through­out the en­quiry hear­ings un­til the last hear­ing in­to Cleaver Heights from which he re­cused him­self for rea­sons which are well known. "Re­gret­tably Ude­cott saw fit to mount ac­cu­sa­tions against Ken­neth Sir­ju al­leg­ing con­flicts of in­ter­est aris­ing from a num­ber of projects that his firm had been in­volved with over the years pre­ced­ing this en­quiry.

"Those ac­cu­sa­tions were on­ly fi­nal­ly dis­missed in the High Court on March 5 this year. But as a re­sult of the ac­cu­sa­tions be­ing raised, we de­cid­ed that Ken­neth could not take part in the de­lib­er­a­tions and the draw­ing up of the re­port which took place from Sep­tem­ber 2009 on­wards. "It is not the case, as re­port­ed in the press this morn­ing, that Mr Sir­ju re­signed as a com­mis­sion­er. "But since Mr Sir­ju was un­able to take part in the draw­ing up of the re­port, it has been com­piled and signed on­ly by my­self and Desmond Thorn­hill. "We would both like to ex­press our com­plete con­fi­dence in Ken­neth Sir­ju's in­tegri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism and our re­gret that it was ever ques­tioned. "The last press con­fer­ence of the com­mis­sion was held on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2009, short­ly af­ter the rev­e­la­tion that none of the com­mis­sions had been gazetted, and in the re­sult that the en­quiry had no statu­to­ry va­lid­i­ty. "At that point it ap­peared that the en­quiry, which had been com­plet­ed as far as the orig­i­nal Terms of Ref­er­ence, might re­main in a le­gal lim­bo for an in­def­i­nite pe­ri­od. "It would have seemed rash to pre­dict that on­ly six months lat­er the en­quiry would be back on a prop­er le­gal foot­ing, the hear­ings com­plet­ed and the re­port writ­ten and de­liv­ered. "I would like to put on record that the im­pe­tus for val­i­dat­ing the en­quiry and for al­low­ing us to dri­ve the pro­ceed­ings for­ward to a con­clu­sion came from the Hon At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie, who act­ed with speed and de­ter­mi­na­tion in putting leg­is­la­tion be­fore Par­lia­ment which has now val­i­dat­ed the en­quiry pro­ceed­ings and al­lowed us to bring the process to a con­clu­sion.

"Fi­nal­ly we would like to thank the press for their con­tin­ued and ex­pert cov­er­age of the en­quiry; and the pub­lic for their un­flag­ging in­ter­est in the pro­ceed­ings. "There are few coun­tries in the world where an en­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion in­dus­try could fill a prime time tele­vi­sion slot for over a year. "For me it has been a unique ex­pe­ri­ence and I am per­son­al­ly ho­n­oured to have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty, as I hope, to serve the in­ter­ests of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."