Yvonne Ba­boolal

In about three months, Par­lia­ment will be con­duct­ed in the ul­tra-mod­ern Tow­er D at the Port-of-Spain In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front. This was dis­closed at a press con­fer­ence at the Red House yes­ter­day by Speak­er of the House Wade Mark and Ude­cott chair­man Jear­lean John. Gov­ern­ment MPs, Sen­a­tors and Red House staff will be moved to Tow­er D to ac­com­mo­date the restora­tion project of the his­tor­i­cal seat of Par­lia­ment, John said. Con­trac­tors will be in­vit­ed through open ten­der in a mat­ter of days for out­fit­ting and con­struc­tion works at Tow­er D to fa­cil­i­tate the run­ning of Par­lia­ment.

For the first time, an of­fice will be pro­vid­ed for the Op­po­si­tion Leader and there will be sep­a­rate cham­bers for the Low­er and Up­per Hous­es so ses­sions can be con­duct­ed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The cost of the re­lo­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to cost the State some $41 mil­lion. Mark said the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) has been ap­point­ed project man­ag­er for the re­lo­ca­tion and for the Red House restora­tion. The project is ex­pect­ed to last three years and is the first to be ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed un­der the new­ly-ap­point­ed Ude­cott board. It comes af­ter over $86 mil­lion al­ready was spent out of a $174 mil­lion Cab­i­net-ap­proved bud­get on failed ef­forts to ren­o­vate the Red House dur­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

John said no fi­nal cost for the project has been de­ter­mined as yet. She said the Par­lia­ment build­ing in Ot­tawa is be­ing re­stored, too, and there would be a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment be­tween T&T and Cana­da to get for­eign as­sis­tance in the ren­o­va­tion of the Red House. Restora­tive works on the 108-year-old Red House will in­clude the seis­mic retro­fitting of the build­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, the restora­tion of the ro­tun­da, in­clud­ing the orig­i­nal foun­tain, and var­i­ous re­pair and re­place­ment works. John said giv­en that earth­quakes have be­come more preva­lent, there was grow­ing con­cern Gov­ern­ment should move to pro­tect Red House oc­cu­pants and pre­serve the se­vere­ly aged and struc­tural­ly weak­ened build­ing.

Mark said said since Sep­tem­ber 1997, Cab­i­net ap­proved the ren­o­va­tion of the Red House, list­ed as an Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States mon­u­ment. In Au­gust 2010, Cab­i­net agreed to re­scind an ear­li­er Cab­i­net de­ci­sion that the Red House should be re­stored and used as the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Mark said.

John said the di­vi­sion of the re­lo­ca­tion of Par­lia­ment project in­to three pack­ages would trans­late in­to work for var­i­ous con­trac­tors and their labour force. That, in turn, would as­sist in kick-start­ing the con­struc­tion in­dus­try once again, she not­ed.