Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal says busi­ness will not be as usu­al at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T (Ude­cott). He said so yes­ter­day in re­sponse to Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to re­move Ude­cott from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs to the Hous­ing Min­istry. The an­nounce­ment of the shift was made last week by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Mooni­lal was speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter pre­sent­ing 39 HDC homes to pub­lic ser­vants at the head of­fice of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain.

Pressed by the me­dia about the cur­rent state of Ude­cott, Mooni­lal said: "Ude­cott was run like a Calder Hart es­tate." He said he would meet this week with the board of Ude­cott and its man­age­ment to de­ter­mine the sta­tus of the un­fin­ished Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­ers in Port-of-Spain.Ude­cott chair­man Jear­lean John toured the tow­ers and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion build­ing, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, on May 13 to de­ter­mine what out­stand­ing work need­ed to be done. CH De­vel­op­ment-owned by Calder Hart-was award­ed the $368 mil­lion con­tract un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to build the tow­ers.

Sun­way con­struc­tion was award­ed a $300 mil­lion con­tract to pro­vide all the in­te­ri­or fit­tings and ad­di­tion­al work on the tow­ers. The min­is­ter said he had cau­tioned the board of Ude­cott and man­age­ment, "it will not be busi­ness as usu­al." He said his min­istry was try­ing to in­tro­duce in­stru­men­tal changes with­in the state en­ti­ty to en­sure all process­es of Ude­cott were trans­par­ent. Mooni­lal said, giv­en the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar na­ture of Ude­cott, his min­istry was work­ing to make con­tracts award­ed for projects small­er.

He said small­er con­tracts would al­low for the greater in­volve­ment of lo­cal con­trac­tors ver­sus for­eign con­trac­tors which pre­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nat­ed all projects be­ing done by Ude­cott. Mooni­lal said to en­sure trans­paren­cy, the pro­cure­ment process­es and in­vi­ta­tions to bid would be done pub­licly.

The homes were de­liv­ered through a pro­vi­sion for hous­ing with­in the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion's wage agree­ment with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Stephanie Lewis. The hous­es hand­ed over were from HDC de­vel­op­ments in Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and south Trinidad. Wat­son Duke said the new home­own­ers had been on the HDC wait­ing lists for over ten years, had fam­i­lies or did not have per­ma­nent hous­ing.

Re­port­ing by Ali­cia Llanos