The deadline of February 28 for British Professor John Uff to submit his commission of enquiry report into Udecott and the construction sector will not be met.
President George Maxwell Richards had set this date as the final deadline for the submission of the report. Uff, who led a four-man commission, had originally been given a deadline last October, but with the probe into the Cleaver Heights Housing project, the enquiry was extended, leaving the deadline for the report to be submitted as February 28. But the deadline will not be met because of a judicial review case filed by Udecott (the Urban Development Corporation of T&T) against the Uff commissioners on the ground of bias. The action was against Uff, Kenneth Sirju and Desmond Thornhill, as the other commissioner, Israel Khan, had resigned months before. Justice Mira Dean-Armorer, presiding in the Port-of-Spain High Court, heard the submissions over six days in January and reserved her judgment. Her judgment will be delivered on March 5.
As a result of the court case, Uff gave an undertaking that the report to the President would not be handed over this weekend until the judge had given judgment on the judicial review case. On September 9, 2008, Richards appointed four persons as commissioners to inquire into certain matters in relation to the construction sector. The commission began sitting and heard opening statements on January 12, 2009 and, up to September, had held three sets of hearings during the course of which a substantial amount of information was received by the commissioners by way of written statements, oral testimony under oath and roundtable discussions on some eight items of the terms of reference. Days prior to the start of the final set of hearings on September 7, it was discovered the commission had not been gazetted as is required by Section 15 of the Commission of Enquiry Act on September 9, 2008 when the commission was established.��
As a result, Attorney General John Jeremie went to Parliament and got both Houses to pass the Validation Act, and which was assented to on November 3. This gave the commission a retroactive effect, meaning all the evidence taken before the error was discovered was still valid. Government appointed former Appeal Court Judge, Anthony Lucky to investigate why the report was not gazetted. He submitted his final report to the AG, but nothing has been heard about it again. The fourth and final phase ended on December 8, 2009, with chairman John Uff QC promising to produce his report by the end of February 2010. Udecott is seeking several reliefs, the most important being an order of certiorari to quash the report of the commission, alleging that the commissioners were biased towards the State-owned corporation.