Ken Ali

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning last night con­ced­ed that State en­ter­prise Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) may have "cut cor­ners" in or­der to de­liv­er on its man­date. Man­ning al­so stat­ed that the gov­er­nance mod­el with Ude­cott and oth­er spe­cial pur­pose and state en­ter­pris­es "re­quire im­prove­ments." He said such com­pa­nies "cut cor­ners all the time," but that this was done in or­der to get around bu­reau­cra­cy and to meet the de­mands placed on them. Man­ning iden­ti­fied Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) as one state en­ter­prise which the Gov­ern­ment has had to "fix." He said there have been sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances at lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies.

Man­ning gave an ex­am­ple of a lo­cal gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty break­ing up con­tracts in or­der to per­mit ap­proval by the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer. "We have to ad­dress gov­er­nance is­sues," Man­ning told a pan­el of jour­nal­ists–Hans Hanoomans­ingh of Her­itage Ra­dio, Juhel Browne of CN­MG and An­tho­ny Wil­son, act­ing ed­i­tor-in-chief of the Guardian. He tout­ed spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­nies as be­ing re­quired in or­der to de­liv­er on projects, stat­ing that the pub­lic sec­tor was es­tab­lished to serve ad­min­is­tra­tive pur­pos­es. Man­ning al­so stout­ly de­nied that there was Gov­ern­ment fund­ing in the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ Church at the Heights of Gua­napo.

"There was no state fund­ing, none at all," he stressed. He stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment as­sist­ed the church in the man­ner in which it has helped oth­er places of wor­ship.

Man­ning re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly com­mit­ted fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for im­prove­ment works to the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of the Catholic Church's Arch­bish­op of Port- of-Spain. "This is noth­ing new," the prime min­is­ter stat­ed. He al­so said that nei­ther he nor the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pro­vid­ed any fi­nan­cial sup­port to the Gua­napo church. Asked about sup­port from Calder Hart, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Ude­cott, to the church, Man­ning sug­gest­ed that he may have done so in his "pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty." He con­firmed that the church's leader Ju­liana Pe­na re­mains his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er. Man­ning slammed prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for al­leg­ing there were fi­nan­cial and of­fi­cial links in­volv­ing him, Hart and Pe­na's church. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was "ac­ci­dent prone," that her cam­paign was be­com­ing "nas­ti­er and nas­ti­er" and that, po­lit­i­cal­ly, she had be­come "wild and very des­per­ate."

Quizzed about Hart and his al­leged ties to Ude­cott ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, Man­ning stressed that "no one is above the law." He al­so said that Hart had giv­en "strong sup­port" to the Gov­ern­ment and that he had "paid a high price for it." Man­ning did not state when the 91 rec­om­men­da­tions of the Uff en­quiry in­to Ude­cott would be im­ple­ment­ed. Asked about Hart chair­ing five state cor­po­ra­tions at the same time, the Prime Min­is­ter said that this was done to en­sure "co-or­di­na­tion of gov­ern­ment poli­cies." He al­so said that some peo­ple were re­fus­ing to serve in the pub­lic sec­tor, be­cause of cer­tain de­mands of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. He said he would move to amend that leg­is­la­tion. Man­ning said the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty Act would al­so be amend­ed. "We have to ex­am­ine oth­er mod­els of de­vel­op­ment," he said.