The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) has cleared the air on con­struc­tion work at the prime min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in Blenheim, To­ba­go, say­ing the re­fur­bish­ment will cost around $18 mil­lion.

The dis­clo­sure came af­ter Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Oropouche East Dr Roodal Moni­lal called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the project at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) Mon­day Night Fo­rum at the Debe High School.

Mooni­lal al­leged that ‘a high­way’ was be­ing built to the prop­er­ty, that it suf­fered cost over­runs to the tune of al­most “$20 mil­li­on and the con­trac­tors want more mon­ey.”

He al­so al­leged that the orig­i­nal bud­get to re­fur­bish the prop­er­ty was $2 mil­lion.

Mooni­lal al­so ques­tioned the award­ing of the con­tract for work on the prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, UDe­COTT said the al­le­ga­tions are not true.

“In the first in­stance, the al­le­ga­tions false­ly state, that the works at the Of­fi­cial Res­i­dence in To­ba­go are re­fur­bish­ment works,” the UDe­COTT state­ment said.

It said the cor­po­ra­tion was in­struct­ed, “to de­mol­ish the ter­mite-in­fest­ed di­lap­i­dat­ed struc­ture... and to con­struct a New Of­fi­cial Res­i­dence. The bud­get for this new con­struc­tion was nev­er $2 mil­lion.”

On the is­sue of the award­ing of the con­tract, UDe­COTT said the project was sub­ject to “com­pet­i­tive bid­ding and was award­ed to Parks In­ter­na­tion­al at a Con­tract Price of TT$17,998,114.48.”

Be­fore Mooni­lal’s state­ments on the project, Guardian Me­dia re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion on the con­struc­tion.

On Tues­day, af­ter the MP’s state­ments UDe­COTT’s chair­man Noel Gar­cia said the com­pa­ny will not com­ment on the is­sue.

“I am not get­ting in­volved in the po­lit­i­cal state­ment. UDe­COTT is not a po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion. UDe­COTT is an im­ple­men­ta­tion agency for the gov­ern­ment... I as chair­man have no in­ten­tion of drag­ging UDe­COTT in­to the po­lit­i­cal gayelle”, he said.

How­ev­er, since Au­gust 20, UDe­COTT’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment told Guardian Me­dia that its queries on the project will be an­swered.

This came af­ter Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site and re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of the project-com­ple­tion date and bud­get.

Af­ter many calls to the cor­po­ra­tion, Guardian Me­dia was told to for­ward the ques­tions, via email, to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment. This was done on the morn­ing of Au­gust 20.

The cor­po­ra­tion replied lat­er that evening.

“I (com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer) copied to Ms. Sta­ple­ton our Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­ag­er to ad­dress these ques­tions fur­ther.”

UDe­COTT nev­er replied to the queries.