Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

More than six years af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning failed to ful­fil his promise to pub­lish the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project, one of the com­mis­sion­ers from that in­ves­ti­ga­tion has ex­pressed scep­ti­cism that a sim­i­lar re­port on the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott) would be made pub­lic.

Ac­cord­ing to T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) chair­man Vic­tor Hart, Trinidad and To­ba­go would not ap­pear to "get val­ue for mon­ey" from the mil­lions of dol­lars used to fund the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor. "Giv­en the Pi­ar­co re­port ex­pe­ri­ence and not­ing the fate of the Gafoor Re­port on the Health Sec­tor and the Sir­ju Re­port of the Ca­roni Bridge col­lapse, I was skep­ti­cal about the pub­li­ca­tion of the Uff Re­port," Hart said. Hart, who was a com­mis­sion­er on the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project, said a com­mis­sion's work would be au­then­ti­cat­ed through the pub­li­ca­tion of its re­port. He not­ed that much com­fort was not of­fered from Man­ning's state­ments to pub­lish the re­port on Ude­cott be­cause Man­ning car­ried a poor rep­u­ta­tion for pub­lish­ing re­ports from such in­quires. Hart stressed that Man­ning failed to keep good on his promise to pub­lish the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern that with­hold­ing the re­port from the pub­lic would im­pede calls that might be made for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the ap­par­ent mis­be­hav­iour of peo­ple hold­ing pub­lic of­fice re­lat­ed the Ude­cott en­quiry. "I was con­cerned that the coun­try would not get val­ue for mon­ey from this ex­pen­sive en­quiry by be­ing de­nied sight of the re­port's rec­om­men­da­tions on pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment re­form, con­struc­tion sec­tor re­forms and any call that might be made for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to ap­par­ent mis­be­hav­iour by some per­sons hold­ing pub­lic of­fice," Hart told the Guardian. He added that he was con­fi­dent that civ­il so­ci­ety was "suf­fi­cient­ly alive to these is­sues," and that it would not al­low the same fate of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project "to be­fall the Uff Re­port." "Nonethe­less, the sit­u­a­tion calls for vig­i­lance by civ­il so­ci­ety and a will­ing­ness to make its voic­es heard if there is any un­due de­lay in pub­li­ca­tion," Hart said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that "the eu­pho­ria" sur­round­ing Prof John Uff's de­liv­ery of Ude­cott re­port to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards re­mind­ed him of Clin­ton Bernard de­liv­ery of the Pi­ar­co re­port on Au­gust 30, 2003, to Richards. "As with the Uff Re­port, there was hope that the Pi­ar­co re­port would be laid in Par­lia­ment and pub­lished in quick time...Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning then promised to do just that af­ter the re­port had been 'sani­tised,'" he said. "To­day, six years plus lat­er, the re­port is yet to see the light of day. "What dis­tress­es me as a com­mis­sion­er who gave 16 months of pub­lic ser­vice on the en­quiry and saw mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars spent are (a) the pub­lic's right to know has been de­nied and (b) the rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port have not been aired and con­sid­ered for adop­tion." Hart said that he was con­vinced that had some of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Pi­ar­co en­quiry been adopt­ed, "the wastage of many mil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic mon­ey through mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion could have been avoid­ed dur­ing the last six years." "Even the need for hold­ing of the Uff en­quiry might have been avoid­ed," he said.