Your cov­er sto­ry in the Sun­day Guardian on the In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment re­quires a re­sponse to dis­pel some of the care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed con­fu­sion around this im­por­tant set of pro­pos­als.

The Pub­lic Prop­er­ty known as In­vaders Bay com­pris­es 70 acres of re­claimed land at the wa­ter­front in west Port-of-Spain and it is pro­posed to be the largest de­vel­op­ment in our cap­i­tal city in liv­ing mem­o­ry.

It is un­ac­cept­able that this large-scale de­vel­op­ment could be pro­ceed­ing with­out any pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and in the se­ri­ous­ly im­prop­er man­ner against which the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) has protest­ed. It is sober­ing that the very Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment (MPSD) has been lead­ing this process for the last four years with­out seek­ing to en­gage in pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

The Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) process used in Au­gust 2011 by MPSD was im­prop­er and void­able, since, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Tewarie him­self, the as­sess­ment rules were pub­lished one month af­ter the clos­ing date.

Any rep­utable or­gan­i­sa­tion run­ning a com­pe­ti­tion or ten­der would ac­cept that the rules must be giv­en to all the com­peti­tors at the same time and well in ad­vance of the com­pe­ti­tion it­self. That ba­sic and in­escapable breach has been point­ed out to MPSD sev­er­al times by the JCC, but we are yet to see any re­sponse on that point.

Af­ter JCC spec­i­fied its con­cerns that the RFP was in breach of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act, the Min­is­ter re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that the le­gal ad­vice was that MPSD was in con­for­mi­ty with the law. De­spite our sev­er­al re­quests, that ad­vice was nev­er pub­lished, so the JCC sued un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. The High Court ruled that the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion be pub­lished and MPSD ap­pealed. One can on­ly won­der at this re­luc­tance by politi­cians to pub­lish le­gal ad­vice which sup­pos­ed­ly sup­ports their ac­tions. This type of of­fi­cial ret­i­cence is a first, so on this count at least, the In­vaders Bay project has a sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment of in­no­va­tion.

The JCC has en­quired as to the cost of the High Court case and the sub­se­quent ap­peal, but that too has re­mained undis­closed, for what­ev­er rea­son.

Ac­cord­ing to Ms Jear­lean John of Ude­cott, a ten­der has been award­ed for de­sign of in­fra­struc­ture on this 70-acre site, but we al­so know from MPSD that no plan­ning ap­pli­ca­tions have been made for these de­vel­op­ments.

That rais­es the se­ri­ous ques­tion as to how an in­fra­struc­ture lay­out can be de­signed in the ab­sence of ei­ther pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion or rel­e­vant ap­provals.

The care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed con­fu­sion can be seen in three glar­ing ex­am­ples: first­ly, the ques­tion of of­fi­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty–with Min­is­ter Tewarie re­fer­ring de­tailed queries to Ude­cott, whose chair­man refers those queries back to that Min­is­ter.

Sec­ond­ly, ac­cord­ing to MPSD, the 10.2 acre par­cel al­lo­cat­ed to Derek Chin was val­ued at $204.5 mil­lion, yet Chin is re­port­ed as say­ing that "...the price is $130 mil­lion..."

Fi­nal­ly, the en­tire prop­er­ty is 70 acres and 23.2 acres have been al­lo­cat­ed, so it seems that 46.8 acres are to be left un­de­vel­oped at this stage.

So, how can Ude­cott be re­spon­si­ble for on­ly 51 acres, with Min­is­ter Tewarie say­ing that "...there are about 40 acres of land at In­vad­er's Bay still open for de­vel­op­ment..."?

These are a few of the re­al con­cerns with this pro­posed In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment.

Afra Ray­mond

JCC Pres­i­dent