Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said next week's Ude­cott hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny for the Scar­bor­ough Fi­nan­cial Com­plex has been can­celled, ow­ing to com­plaints by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don. Mooni­lal made the dis­clo­sure dur­ing an im­promp­tu news brief­ing at the Par­lia­ment in Port-of-Spain af­ter yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Lon­don said on Wednes­day it was the THA which had hired Ude­cott to man­age the project and the fin­ished build­ing should be hand­ed over to them. But Mooni­lal said in re­sponse yes­ter­day that it was nor­mal for Ude­cott to hand over a com­plet­ed project to the client. He said: "Mr Lon­don is ob­ject­ing to the Ude­cott hand­ing over to the THA, but he can­not hand over any­thing. He has no keys. I don't know if Mr Lon­don wants to hand (over) to him­self."

Mooni­lal said in def­er­ence to Lon­don's con­cerns, he has asked Ude­cott to can­cel the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny. "So that what we may do is put the keys in an en­ve­lope and FedEx it to Mr Lon­don," Mooni­lal said. Com­ment­ing on the planned Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, Mooni­lal said it was the PM's pre­rog­a­tive to ap­point min­is­ters and he was con­fi­dent that his min­istry had per­formed sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly and would get a pass­ing mark.