Richard Lord

Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Emi­ly Dick-Forde says the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) is right to legal­ly chal­lenge al­le­ga­tions of bias against it by the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor.

In a state­ment is­sued on Mon­day, Ude­cott con­firmed it had filed for ju­di­cial re­view of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. It added that the ac­tion was not an at­tempt on its part "to chal­lenge or un­der­mine the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion, or the ac­tions tak­en by the State to val­i­date the hear­ings thus far." In a tele­phone in­ter­view from New York on Tues­day, Dick-Forde said she had no prob­lems with Ude­cott's lat­est move. "The Ude­cott board took the de­ci­sion and I agree with it be­cause I con­sid­er that as the cor­rect process for them to take," she added. Dick Forde, who is line min­is­ter for Ude­cott, al­so in­sist­ed that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Ude­cott were not at odds with each oth­er over the con­tin­u­a­tion of the en­quiry. "He (Je­re­mie) is com­mit­ted to the con­tin­u­a­tion of the work of the com­mis­sion and he un­der­stands Ude­cott's move," she in­sist­ed.

Dick-Forde said she had been meet­ing with Je­re­mie reg­u­lar­ly to dis­cuss the en­quiry.

"The last meet­ing took place short­ly be­fore I left for New York on Sun­day with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, to at­tend a cli­mate change con­fer­ence," she said. Dick-Forde said Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, Je­re­mie and the Gov­ern­ment as a whole re­mained com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the work of the com­mis­sion re­sumes and a re­port is sub­mit­ted up­on its con­clu­sion. The com­mis­sion was es­tab­lished last year by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, on the ad­vice of Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning and be­gan pub­lic hear­ings at the Win­sure Build­ing, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain in Jan­u­ary. It has com­plet­ed three rounds of hear­ings and was about to be­gin a fourth on Sep­tem­ber 7, when Chair­man Uff an­nounced that the le­gal re­quire­ment to pub­lish the hold­ing of the com­mis­sion in the Gazette, was not met. He then sus­pend­ed the com­mis­sion in­def­i­nite­ly. Je­re­mie had sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced in Par­lia­ment that leg­is­la­tion to val­i­date the work of the com­mis­sion and to al­low it to re­sume, would be tak­en to Par­lia­ment short­ly. And com­ment­ing on the non-gazetting of the en­quiry, Dick-Forde said yes­ter­day that it was very im­por­tant that "we find out how the Com­mis­sion was not gazetted. That was an em­bar­rass­ment to all of us."

She said she be­lieved Man­ning was "an ho­n­ourable man who would not es­tab­lish the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry and try to abort it be­fore its nat­ur­al con­clu­sion and the sub­mis­sion of its re­port." Asked if there was any like­li­hood that Je­re­mie would be mov­ing to dis­con­tin­ue moves to val­i­date the work of the com­mis­sion, Dick-Forde stressed: "Ab­solute­ly not. That is not on the agen­da. There is not go­ing to be any back­ing down by Gov­ern­ment to have the com­mis­sion com­plete its work." Dick-Forde said if one were to read the state­ment of Je­re­mie and Ude­cott's state­ment, one would see that they are say­ing one and the same thing. "The AG is not vex with Ude­cott," she added.