Fran­cis Joseph

?Com­mis­sion chair­man, John Uff, said yes­ter­day the com­mis­sion­ers were not bi­ased to­wards Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go(Ude­cott) chair­man, Calder Hart, or any oth­er par­ty. Af­ter months in lim­bo for var­i­ous rea­sons, the in­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor re­sumed yes­ter­day at the Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, with just Uff and Desmond Thorn­hill. Is­rael Khan SC re­signed on Au­gust 11 fol­low­ing an al­le­ga­tion that he was bi­ased to­wards Hart. An­oth­er al­le­ga­tion was made against Com­mis­sion­er Ken­neth Sir­ju in Au­gust, that his com­pa­ny, KS&P Lim­it­ed, had pro­vid­ed de­sign ser­vices to NH In­ter­na­tion­al for the Cleaver Heights Project.

Uff said: "Al­though this con­cerned on­ly the ad­di­tion­al Cleaver Heights is­sues added on May 21, 2008, it was de­cid­ed, af­ter dis­cus­sion among the com­mis­sion­ers, that Mr Sir­ju should not con­tin­ue to have in­volve­ment in any of the Cleaver Heights is­sues." Uff added: "On Sep­tem­ber 1, 2009 it was an­nounced Mr Sir­ju would take no part in any de­lib­er­a­tion or fur­ther hear­ing con­cern­ing Cleaver Heights. "I should add that KS&P Lim­it­ed and Mr Sir­ju had no in­volve­ment what­ev­er in the orig­i­nal Cleaver Heights' is­sues which were added to the terms of ref­er­ence on De­cem­ber 9, 2008.

"It was from an abun­dance of cau­tion that it was de­cid­ed that Mr Sir­ju would have no in­volve­ment with any as­pect of Cleaver Heights." Uff al­so spoke about the non-gazetting of the in­quiry, which was on­ly dis­cov­ered in Sep­tem­ber. But, he said, every­thing was put in place to en­sure the in­quiry con­tin­ue to its fi­nal­i­ty. The chair­man said on Sep­tem­ber 18, Ude­cott's at­tor­neys is­sued ju­di­cial re­view pro­ceed­ings against him­self, Thorn­hill and Sir­ju al­leg­ing bias. That hear­ing is fixed for next month in the Port-of-Spain High Court.

Uff added: "For the record, the com­mis­sion­ers strong­ly dis­pute that any­thing which has tak­en place in this in­quiry will, to a fair-mind­ed and in­formed ob­serv­er, give the ap­pear­ance of bias against ei­ther Ude­cott, Mr Calder Hart, or any oth­er par­ty to the in­quiry. "The com­mis­sion­ers re­main en­tire­ly un­bi­ased, for or against any par­ty. The com­mis­sion is now rep­re­sent­ed in the JR pro­ceed­ings by sep­a­rate at­tor­neys and coun­sel, who will seek or­ders from the court dis­miss­ing Ude­cott's ap­pli­ca­tion in its en­tire­ty" Uff said the last phase of the in­quiry would con­tin­ue to­mor­row and with Thurs­day be­ing an ex­tra day. He dis­closed that its re­port was ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards by next Feb­ru­ary 28. (FJ)