Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The ghost of for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), Calder Hart, con­tin­ues to haunt the state en­ter­prise. Two years af­ter the ex-Ude­cott boss re­signed and fled T&T, yet an­oth­er of his de­ci­sions has come un­der the mi­cro­scope-this time it's the hir­ing of De­sign Col­lab­o­ra­tive As­so­ciates Ltd (DCAL) to de­sign a mas­ter plan for the de­vel­op­ment of Port-of-Spain at a cost of $33,766,113.70.

En­gi­neer­ing firm Geni­var was hired as the project man­ag­er and en­gi­neer for the project. How­ev­er, a pe­rusal of doc­u­ments re­vealed that no board ap­proval was grant­ed. And, while in 2008 Ude­cott is­sued three pay­ments, in­clu­sive of mo­bil­i­sa­tion fees, to­talling $10,973,986.97 to the com­pa­ny, the out­stand­ing bal­ance of some $23 mil­lion is now an is­sue of con­tention be­tween Geni­var, DCAL and Ude­cott, as no fur­ther pay­ments have been made to date.

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that Ude­cott has re­fused to ho­n­our the agree­ment on the ba­sis that Hart, in his ca­pac­i­ty as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, had no au­thor­i­ty to en­ter in­to such an agree­ment with­out board ap­proval. As a re­sult, Geni­var and DCAL have ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion against the state en­ter­prise for the out­stand­ing bal­ance.

In the pre-ac­tion let­ter sent to Ude­cott on April 2, by law firm Hamel Smith & Com­pa­ny, Geni­var and DCAL are con­tend­ing that the de­sign of the plan was draft­ed af­ter an agree­ment "which was ev­i­denced part­ly oral­ly, part­ly in writ­ing and part­ly by con­duct meet­ings."

The let­ter stat­ed the oral agree­ment was tak­en on Jan­u­ary 18, 2008, be­tween DCAL man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jack Shenker, di­rec­tor Stephen Mendes and Geni­var, on be­half of clients-for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart and Ude­cott. The agree­ment was ev­i­denced by the fol­low­ing doc­u­ments:

• Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment Plan­ning and Im­ple­men­ta­tion pro­pos­al dat­ed De­cem­ber 20, 2007

• Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment Plan­ning and Im­ple­men­ta­tion pro­pos­al dat­ed Jan­u­ary 10, 2008

• Let­ter of award dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 21, 2008, from Ude­cott to Geni­var

• Let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 25, 2008, from Geni­var to Ude­cott

While the agree­ment by con­duct in­volved:

• Eleven stake­hold­ers' meet­ings from April 16, 2008, to Jan­u­ary 19, 2009, which were at­tend­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies, non-gov­ern­men­tal groups and pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies

• Un­der cov­er of mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed No­vem­ber 17, 2008, Geni­var sub­mit­ted 50 copies of the re­port on the wa­ter­front mas­ter plan for pre­sen­ta­tion to Cab­i­net to­geth­er with the Cab­i­net note

• On March 11, 2008, and Sep­tem­ber 9, 2008, Geni­var made pre­sen­ta­tions of the plan to Ude­cott

• On Jan­u­ary 29, 2009, Geni­var made a pre­sen­ta­tion of the plan to Cab­i­net

• On De­cem­ber 3, 2010, Geni­var made a pre­sen­ta­tion of the plan to the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs

Ac­knowl­edge­ment of the agree­ment, Geni­var stat­ed, in­volved the fol­low­ing terms and con­di­tions:

• A mo­bil­i­sa­tion fee of ten per cent of the to­tal fee, in­clu­sive of over­seas per­son­nel ex­pens­es in the sum of $3,376,611.37 (VAT in­clu­sive)

• Eight equal month­ly in­stal­ments (VAT in­clu­sive) in the sum of $3,798,687.80

The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that on Jan­u­ary 25, 2010, Ude­cott chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer, Ak­ou­fua Ed­ward, ac­knowl­edged that the state en­ter­prise owed the com­pa­ny $15,194,751.20 and not the sum claimed by Geni­var and DCAL.Both com­pa­nies, Geni­var and DCAL, are in­sist­ing that monies are paid.

For­mer min­is­ter failed in at­tempts to have monies paid

The le­gal ac­tion comes one year af­ter for­mer Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs min­is­ter, Mary King, al­so failed in her bid to have the out­stand­ing monies paid. King, in a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 24, 2011, had made a case for the out­stand­ing monies to be paid to DCAL di­rec­tor Stephen Mendes.

In the let­ter sent to new Ude­cott boss Jear­lean John, King stat­ed a large amount of mon­ey was owed to Mendes. How­ev­er, John dis­missed the re­quest, in­di­cat­ing that no board ap­proval was grant­ed for the project and in­struct­ed that the mat­ter be eval­u­at­ed by the new Ude­cott board.

Mendes shot in­to the spot­light in 2010, af­ter it was re­vealed he was the ar­chi­tect be­hind the con­tro­ver­sial Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ Church in Gua­napo. The church, owned by Rev Ju­liana Pe­na, the spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, has since been de­stroyed by van­dals.