Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has con­firmed Gov­ern­ment is clos­ing in on the pur­chase of the un­oc­cu­pied First Cit­i­zens (FCB) build­ing on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, to house the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

In re­sponse to ques­tions at yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Ar­mour said the lease agree­ment for a Park Street build­ing that had been pre­vi­ous­ly ear­marked for the build­ing was ter­mi­nat­ed. Ar­mour said $55 mil­lion in rental fees had been paid for that build­ing since 2019.

Ar­mour said fix­tures and fur­ni­ture in­stalled at the Park Street build­ing will be spread through­out oth­er of­fices op­er­at­ed by the DPP.

“A lot of the fur­ni­ture which was pur­chased by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and was ac­tu­al­ly in­stalled in the Park Street build­ing while it re­mained un­oc­cu­pied has been re­al­lo­cat­ed and gra­cious­ly ac­cept­ed by the DPP in his Win­sure build­ing and oth­er of­fices of the DPP, be­cause we are out­fit­ting those build­ings as we speak for bet­ter ac­com­mo­da­tions of the DPP,” Ar­mour said as he con­firmed an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia sto­ry which re­vealed the im­pend­ing pur­chase.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is about to sign off on a pur­chase of the FCB build­ing and that is to pur­chase that build­ing for the ac­com­mo­da­tion of the DPP. A val­u­a­tion re­port has been ob­tained and the build­ing is there­fore go­ing to be pur­chased by the state.”

The AG said DPP Roger Gas­pard and his staff have giv­en the new build­ing a thumb’s up fol­low­ing site vis­its.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on Tues­day, Gas­pard said there was a view­ing of the build­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months ago. How­ev­er, he could not give a time­frame for when the ac­tu­al move would take place.

Last year, Gas­pard com­plained about man­pow­er short­ages in his of­fice. Yes­ter­day, Ar­mour said ef­forts were be­ing made to fill the gaps.

“The to­tal num­ber of staff for the DPP is 129, the num­ber of va­can­cies filled is 75 and va­can­cies 54,” he said

Mean­while, dur­ing a meet­ing to ap­prove an al­lo­ca­tion of $823,796,200 to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, in­clud­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, failed to fur­ther probe the $50 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for en­ter­tain­ment and func­tions.

Oropouche West MP Dave Tan­coo ques­tioned the re­vised es­ti­mate and asked what ac­count­ed for the re­pairs and main­te­nance of build­ings. Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ex­plained that the al­lo­ca­tion rep­re­sent­ed funds owed.

“There are huge out­stand­ing sums of mon­ey owed by the OPM to Ude­COTT and when a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion ex­er­cise was done, the sum owed to Ude­COTT from since fis­cal 2019 to date is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $53 mil­lion, so when the Min­istry of Fi­nance saw this, the Bud­get Di­vi­sion al­lo­cat­ed sums of mon­ey to re­pay these sums ow­ing un­der var­i­ous line items, one of the line items that it was al­lo­cat­ed to is of­fi­cial en­ter­tain­ment,” Young said.