Asha Javeed

"Look­ing at the Wa­ter­front some nights ago, with the light­ing, I thought what a mag­nif­i­cent struc­ture. It has changed the land­scape of this coun­try. What­ev­er else he did, he did that," mused Jear­lean John, who was con­firmed as the chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T last week.

She was re­fer­ring to the man she re­placed, Calder Hart. She re­marked that Hart's lega­cy is ev­i­dent in the mul­ti-storeyed, glass-walled build­ings that have trans­formed the cap­i­tal city in the past 10 years- an en­vi­able feat in spite of the al­le­ga­tions of Ude­cott's mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion. It was 4 pm last Mon­day evening, and in be­tween plan­ning for a key-pre­sen­ta­tion cer­e­mo­ny the fol­low­ing day at Union Hall, John had agreed to speak with the Busi­ness Guardian. John, who ad­mits to be­ing mar­ried to her job and "ex­treme­ly dis­ci­plined" at that, is al­so the chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). She'd thought the in­ter­view would take 10 min­utes but even­tu­al­ly stopped check­ing time. It took about 45 min­utes. The re­turn­ing chair­man ac­knowl­edged that com­pared to the "loom­ing fig­ure" of Hart, she is a pe­tite 5 feet 2" and had a say-it-like-she-sees-it per­son­al­i­ty.

But John is unique-she's the on­ly Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ap­point­ed chair­man to be re-ap­point­ed to that po­si­tion.Why? The ques­tions be­ing asked are: did she play the pol­i­tics well or did the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, in this in­stance, choose the per­son for the job with the best skill set?

Well, as she sees it, she's com­mit­ted to work which has earned her the con­fi­dence of her line Min­is­ters: Roodal Mooni­lal, the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment and Sen­a­tor Mary King, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs. "It was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of the de­vel­op­ment of T&T in a re­al sense," she told the Bui­ness Guardian. Launched on De­cem­ber 28, 1994, Ude­cott man­aged more than 39 con­struc­tion and restora­tion projects worth more than $4 bil­lion.

De­spite Hart's ex­it, Ude­cott is still syn­ony­mous with him, the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) and the year-long Com­mis­sion of En­quiry which re­vealed al­le­ga­tions of im­pro­pri­ety and bad gov­er­nance. Hart was asked to re­sign af­ter it was al­leged that a com­pa­ny called CH De­vel­op­ment-which ap­peared to have close fam­i­ly ties to his wife, Sher­rine Hart-re­ceived a con­struc­tion project con­tract val­ued at $320 mil­lion. John's job now is to do to Ude­cott what Steve Jobs did to Ap­ple.

It's that sim­ple. Jobs trans­formed Ap­ple, then just a com­put­er com­pa­ny, in­to a bil­lion-dol­lar en­ter­prise with in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts like the the Ipod, Iphone and Ipad. With a smile, she ad­mits, she doesn't pos­sess about one per cent of the tal­ent that Jobs pos­sess but it's not bad shoes to fol­low. "Work is work to me, work is not a sta­tus sym­bol."

New board

King told the new­ly-ap­point­ed board-which in­cludes a crim­i­nal lawyer, ar­chi­tect, ac­coun­tant and fi­nan­cial man­ag­er- that they need­ed to re­gain the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic. King com­mit­ted Ude­cott to be­ing a ful­ly ac­count­able en­ti­ty and fur­nished the board with the Com­pa­nies Act, the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act and the State En­ter­prise Mon­i­tor­ing Man­u­al. She en­cour­aged board mem­bers to im­me­di­ate­ly de­clare con­flicts of in­ter­ests, which hasn't al­ways hap­pened at Ude­cott, to en­sure trans­paren­cy. The time has come for Ude­cott to move on, says John.

Set­tling in

John was first ap­point­ed chair­man of Ude­cott in April 2010. Af­ter a month and a half on the job, a gen­er­al elec­tion were called. She'd bare­ly had time to set­tle in. That, she said, wasn't enough to get her mind around the in­tri­ca­cies of the or­gan­i­sa­tion as there were no chief ex­ec­u­tive or chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer to help tran­si­tion her in. Hart, who was ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive, had re­signed and left the coun­try and Nee­lan­da Ram­paul, the COO, had fol­lowed suit. "I re­al­ly wasn't giv­en spe­cif­ic di­rec­tives. But you knew what the or­gan­i­sa­tion need­ed at that time. You had peo­ple who re­al­ly need­ed that sense of di­rec­tion," she said. John's re­cep­tion then was greet­ed with scep­ti­cism in the pub­lic­i­ty-bruised state com­pa­ny. "Ob­vi­ous­ly they were not hap­py. As a cor­po­ra­tion, they would have been the sub­ject of en­vy. They were get­ting all the pres­tige projects and now their names were lit­er­al­ly in sham­bles. There was low morale, a lot of con­fu­sion be­cause every­thing had hap­pened so quick­ly. The chair­man was here to­day and gone to­mor­row," she re­called.

The "walk­ing on eggshells" phase soon passed af­ter elec­tions were called. "Dur­ing the pe­ri­od of elec­tions you don't re­al­ly do too much or take too many de­ci­sions that are ma­te­r­i­al," she said. Af­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship vic­to­ry, John viewed her role sole­ly as care­tak­er un­til a new board was in place. She ad­mit­ted that not much has or could have been done with­out a board. "I took a back seat and al­lowed the new min­is­ter to get to un­der­stand Ude­cott. As fate would have it, I was asked to be on this board. I am re­al­ly de­light­ed at that op­por­tu­ni­ty." "Ude­cott is not on­ly about large build­ings. Ude­cott was cre­at­ed to help with the build-up of this coun­try. I be­lieve there's is a lot in the en­er­gy of the peo­ple which can be har­nessed and pro­ject­ed."

Uff Rec­om­men­da­tions

Short­ly af­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship came in­to pow­er, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney was tasked with im­ple­ment­ing Pro­fes­sor Uff's 92 rec­om­men­da­tions. Vol­ney ex­plained to the Busi­ness Guardian that the Uff re­port was not a crim­i­nal probe. "All the Uff re­port served to do was di­rect the Gov­ern­ment to ar­eas where a crim­i­nal probe might un­cov­er malfea­sance or wrong do­ing," he said. Vol­ney said he se­cured the opin­ions of two Queens Coun­sel: David Williams and Al­lan New­man and a small min­is­te­r­i­al team is look­ing to ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment. From them, the Cab­i­net will ad­vise on the next steps. "We are not chas­ing shad­ows. If the Cab­i­net sus­pect there is a pos­si­ble crim­i­nal probe, it will fol­low or pur­sue," he said.

Fi­nan­cials

Ude­cott is illiq­uid.

The com­pa­ny last pub­lished any form of fi­nan­cial state­ment, their half year re­sults in 2008, which put their prof­it at $24 mil­lion up from 16 mil­lion in 2007. The new board, which meets on Fri­day, will have to ex­am­ine three years: 2008, 2009, 2010 fi­nan­cials. John ex­plained that monies are owed to Ude­cott by sev­er­al min­istries. But the com­pa­ny al­so has debts to pay. Ude­cott fi­nanced its op­er­a­tions through bonds and a bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion through the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund. No al­lo­ca­tion was made in the 2011 fis­cal year. She ex­plained that, in many in­stances, Ude­cott's in­voic­es were not ho­n­oured. "The per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, who were the ac­count­ing of­fi­cers of these min­istries, were un­will­ing to re­lease the funds be­cause they not sat­is­fied with the in­for­ma­tion Ude­cott pre­sent­ed. So they keep ask­ing Ude­cott for ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion in an ef­fort to sat­is­fy what­ev­er cri­te­ria they have based on their reg­u­la­tions," she told the Busi­ness Guardian. "Their books would have a lot of mon­ey. They have a lot of re­ceive­ables but they're not liq­uid. It's an illiq­uid com­pa­ny," stat­ed John.

Among the com­pa­ny's fol­lies, she said, Ude­cott raised fi­nanc­ing (bonds) on its own which put debt on their books. On Jan­u­ary 18, 2006 Ude­cott float­ed a $192 mil­lion, 12-year bond which was over­sub­scribed, at­tract­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $288.9 mil­lion in bids. "One doesn't know what the res­o­lu­tion is: whether there will be a re­fi­nanc­ing or the min­istries will be al­lo­cat­ed funds to clear their debt."

The Gov­ern­ment, she said, will have to ho­n­our the bonds. How do you be­gin to make Ude­cott prof­itable, asked the Busi­ness Guardian. "Ude­cott was prof­itable be­fore. It owns the Hy­att which is prof­itable," she ob­served. "You re­al­ly have to change the way Ude­cott does their busi­ness be­cause Ude­cott didn't own any­thing. Ude­cott was project man­ag­er. They man­aged on be­half of gov­ern­ment min­istries and state or­gan­i­sa­tions. These or­gan­i­sa­tions were like, I need to get this, based on what­ev­er vi­sion and Ude­cott will build. What Ude­cott did not do is se­cure where the for­tune was com­ing from in that sense. So Ude­cott would have start­ed the project and then find them­selves strug­gling and got en­gaged in all sorts of ex­pen­sive sorts of fi­nanc­ing. That was part of the ma­jor prob­lem of Ude­cott."

Projects

Ude­cott has sev­er­al projects on the draw­ing board; many still in­com­plete and build­ings to be fur­nished.

"A lot of mon­ey has al­ready been spent so I have not been giv­en any man­date to stop, as such, but whether you start up will be a func­tion of liq­uid­i­ty," she said. John be­lieves all Ude­cott's build­ings will be utilised as Gov­ern­ment's rental bill is too high. In HDC's South Quay of­fices, the Gov­ern­ment pays $500,000 a month, she said. "They will be utilised. They were built for Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion and In­land Rev­enue, the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs etc. I have no doubt in my mind that Trinidad is open for busi­ness. It's all a mat­ter of mar­ket­ing and pro­vi­sion­ing. There will be peo­ple com­ing to Trinidad look­ing for spaces to rent. "Any build­ing can be re­named, as long as it's an of­fice. But take, for ex­am­ple, the San Fer­nan­do Per­form­ing Acad­e­my, that would have been built in a par­tic­u­lar way for acoustic, change room and so on. Based on the ad­vanced na­ture of the work you won't be able to change it to any­thing else un­less you choose to do so at the cost to the tax­pay­ers."

She said in the past eight months, on-go­ing projects have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly scaled down.

But the or­gan­i­sa­tion was not stag­nant. "They had fa­cil­i­ties to man­age like parkades etc so they kept do­ing that. You wouldn't be mak­ing any ma­te­r­i­al de­ci­sions be­cause you didn't want to in­ter­fere with any new boards. When the new board came in, they had a clear path on which they can run."

The board agen­da would be to sort out the "fi­nan­cial co­nun­drum" and be­gin work again.

John point­ed out that Ude­cott was tasked to build the new hos­pi­tals: the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal and they have al­ready ac­quired and vest­ed lands in Ude­cott.

Ude­cott Board:

Jear­lean John: chair­man

Zabar Mo­hammed Baksh: deputy chair­man

Charles Balka­ran

Dr Vic­to­ria Phillips-Jerome

Glenn Par­mas­sar

Dami­an Hares

Shankar Bidaisee

Bri­an An­tho­ny Lewis

Eli Za­k­our

Ude­cott Projects

(Feb­ru­ary 2011)

Hous­ing Projects

Re­al Spring Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, Val­sayn

To­ba­go Projects

Scar­bor­ough Fi­nan­cial Com­plex

So­cial In­fra­struc­tur­al Projects

Hos­pi­tals: Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre, Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal

Fire Sta­tions

Po­lice Sta­tions: Ari­ma, Besson Street, Bras­so, Cu­mu­to, Guapo, La Brea, Mal­oney, Mara­cas, Matelot, Mathu­ra, Moru­ga, Old Grange, Oropouche, Pi­ar­co, Rox­bor­ough, St Clair, St Joseph

Oth­er: Coast Guard Fa­cil­i­ty, To­ba­go, Hart's Cut fa­cil­i­ty, Na­tion­al Air Guard, St James Bar­racks

Core In­fra­struc­tur­al Projects

Port of Port of Spain

Arts Cul­ture & Sports

Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um ( 98 per cent com­plete)

La Hor­quet­ta Pan The­atre

Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (South Cam­pus)

Pan Trin­ba­go

Tu­co Con­va­les­cence Home

Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions

Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Com­plex

Ch­agua­nas Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Com­plex

Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex

Restora­tion and Re­fur­bish­ment Works

Knowsley Build­ing Restora­tion

Mille Fleurs Es­tate, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah

Red House

Stollmey­ers Cas­tle

White Hall

Pres­i­dent's House

Con­cep­tu­al Projects

Cove Busi­ness and In­dus­tri­al Park

Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Project

Scar­bor­ough In­te­grat­ed Mas­ter Plan

Sea Lots Mul­ti-Storey Car Park