Gail Alexan­der

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $80 mil­lion has been spent on restora­tion of the Red House since 2003–when work start­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion–and the job is not com­plete yet.

The fig­ure was con­firmed dur­ing a meet­ing yes­ter­day when of­fi­cials of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) which has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the project met with pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers of the Par­lia­ment and of­fi­cials of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry. The Par­lia­ment was rep­re­sent­ed by House Speak­er Wade Mark and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith. The lengthy meet­ing took place yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at the Red House. Ude­cott had been re­spon­si­ble for re­fur­bish­ment work on the build­ing, in­clud­ing the north­ern and south­ern seg­ments of its roof since 2003, soon af­ter the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment be­gan ex­am­in­ing a Cab­i­net pro­pos­al to re­lo­cate the Par­lia­ment from the Red House. It was pro­posed that the build­ing house the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM).

Be­cause of the out­cry over that pro­pos­al, the plan re­mained in the bal­ance over sub­se­quent years and no for­mal de­ci­sion was tak­en, but the long-term pro­jec­tion was that the OPM would even­tu­al­ly move to the Red House. Ude­cott sub­se­quent­ly sub-con­tract­ed the Cana­di­an firm of Geni­var to han­dle the job of ren­o­vat­ing and re­fur­bish­ing the south­ern and mid-sec­tion of the Red House which was ex­pect­ed to house the OPM. Ear­li­er in the year, Ude­cott con­firmed that work by Geni­var was still on­go­ing. A tem­po­rary roof is still over one sec­tion of the build­ing as work is be­ing done. Af­ter the Gov­ern­ment changed in the May 24 elec­tion, how­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that the Red House would re­main as the seat of Par­lia­ment.

Her promise was a key part of her ad­dress to the Par­lia­ment dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the term two weeks ago. At yes­ter­day's meet­ing with Ude­cott of­fi­cials, pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers of the Par­lia­ment sought to re­ceive a com­pre­hen­sive up­date on the sta­tus of the long-stand­ing re­fur­bish­ment project. A gov­ern­ment source said in­for­ma­tion was sought on the restora­tion project, but "we're still not in a po­si­tion to make a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment on it." The source said that fur­ther scruti­ny of the project, which was nec­es­sary, would en­tail a pe­ri­od of as­sess­ment in­clud­ing sourc­ing in­for­ma­tion to clar­i­fy "cer­tain as­pects of the work." Asked about the large sum so far spent on the project, the source not­ed: "...and the job is not even com­plete yet." They said, how­ev­er, that all stake­hold­ers "are on board" and ef­forts would be made to fast-track the project to en­sure the Red House was prop­er­ly re­fur­bished soon as be­fit­ting the seat of the Par­lia­ment which the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced.

The source said that meet­ings would con­tin­ue among the par­ties on the is­sue to bring clo­sure to the mat­ter. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, for­mer pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, de­clined com­ment on the is­sue. Oth­er of­fi­cials of the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion point­ed out that the Red House restora­tion project had fall­en un­der the Ude­cott and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter at the time. They al­so not­ed state­ments by the con­trac­tors that the fact that the Par­lia­ment was in use dur­ing the restora­tion project, had con­tributed to a de­lay on the work.