Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic, So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs, Mary King is ex­pect­ed to meet with of­fi­cials of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) to­mor­row to deal with sev­er­al burn­ing is­sues at the com­pa­ny. Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that top of the agen­da is the $7.7 bil­lion debt the com­pa­ny has found it­self in and the many in­com­plete projects over which it pre­sides. Yes­ter­day, King con­firmed the meet­ing: "A let­ter was sent out in­form­ing of­fi­cials of the meet­ing. When that meet­ing takes place I will be meet­ing with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to deal with the rel­e­vant is­sues."

Mean­while, in a fol­low-up to a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive re­port last week, which un­earthed that the shady op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued at Ude­cott fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart, Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er Greer Quan said, "The cor­po­ra­tion ad­heres strict­ly to its pro­ce­dures for the pro­cure­ment of goods, ar­ti­cles and ser­vices." Not deny­ing that the com­pa­ny had racked up a $7.7 bil­lion debt (set to be a drain on the trea­sury), and that they were pre­sid­ing over sev­er­al in­com­plete projects, Quan said the com­pa­ny act­ed on Cab­i­net di­rec­tives.

"Ude­cott act­ed in ac­cor­dance with Cab­i­net di­rec­tives with re­gard to projects and the fund­ing rel­a­tive there­to. Fur­ther­more, Quan added, "Ude­cott re­ports to a line min­istry (the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs) and its share­hold­er, the Min­istry of Fi­nance. "In­struc­tions re­gard­ing fund­ing are pro­vid­ed by way of board and oth­er ap­provals." She in­sist­ed all pay­ments are ac­com­pa­nied with prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion.