Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an.She dis­closed that in an in­ter­view af­ter yes­ter­day's Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's pre­sen­ta­tion of keys cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.A toal of 150 ap­pli­cants re­ceived keys to their new homes across Trinidad.Among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries was Vic­tor Dell, a res­i­dent from Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do, who ap­plied for a house 45 years ago.When he re­ceived his keys from Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he made the sign of the cross and thanked the PM.She was asked to com­ment on the sta­tus of PURE - an ini­tia­tive of the for­mer Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment - which Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said was one of the best lega­cies of the PNM.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed the Cab­i­net had re­scind­ed "the de­ci­sion to grant a three-year con­tract to per­sons but as far as I am aware those per­sons are (work­ing) on a month-to-month ba­sis, so they can col­lect their salaries at the end of every month as they have been do­ing thus far."She added: "What has been hap­pen­ing with PURE, there have been a lot of al­le­ga­tions of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties."She said she "in­struct­ed the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has car­ried out these in­struc­tions for a cen­tral au­dit of the op­er­a­tions of PURE."Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was await­ing the find­ings of the au­dit be­fore any fur­ther ac­tion was tak­en.She said the unit re­mained op­er­a­tional. She in­sist­ed PURE was not shut down and em­ploy­ees of the unit were work­ing on a month-to-month ba­sis.

Asked to re­spond to claims from con­trac­tors that they have not been get­ting any jobs un­der PURE, the PM said: "Well I don't un­der­stand, just a cou­ple weeks and they are not get­ting jobs? What has been hap­pen­ing all year. And if you get a job would you be on board the very next day?"There are con­tracts that have al­ready been award­ed. They can con­tin­ue to work. I think it is more im­por­tant that the au­dit be done and that we seek to re­struc­ture, in some way, the PURE unit."She said the au­dit should be com­plet­ed "in two to three weeks."Com­ment­ing on the plot to as­sas­si­nate her, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was be­ing very care­ful. She said she must con­tin­ue her pub­lic en­gage­ments and had con­fi­dence in the se­cu­ri­ty forces.She said she would vis­it Venezuela short­ly on the in­vi­ta­tion of Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez for a meet­ing of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean states.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the meet­ing would dis­cuss mea­sures to im­prove eco­nom­ic co-op­er­a­tion among states.She said she was seek­ing to spend one day in Cara­cas in­stead of the sched­uled four days.Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "it will be of­fen­sive for us not to go on the in­vi­ta­tion of the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela."