Housing Minister Emily Dick-Forde says when she came into office in 2007–after taking over from sacked minister Dr Keith Rowley–she met the ministry in a horrible state. However, she did not say that Rowley left it so. Rowley was dismissed from his ministerial portfolio by Prime Minister Patrick Manning on April 23, 2008. At a hastily-arranged press conference yesterday at the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) building in Port-of-Spain to address concerns of erroneous reports in the media, Dick-Forde also spoke about the progress her ministry had made since she assumed office.
"When I came into the office of minister in 2007...November, what I found in the HDC was a horror and I knew immediately, from the very first time I saw a report with any numbers on it from the HDC, I knew that there was a serious problem in terms of governance and internal control," she said. The minister, who celebrated her birthday yesterday, said additionally, there were neither tender rules nor was there a conflict of interest code. "When I came to the HDC, there were no tender rules, there were none and the board worked very hard and we have before us tender rules that we can now take to the Cabinet," she said. "There were no tender rules at the HDC. There was no conflict of interest code for directors to sign...because there were a lot of conflicts of interest."
She added that there was no document identifying the delegation of financial authorities. "There was no document saying who can sign what and up to what limit...That's a critical document for the governance of any institution and we have that," Dick-Forde said. The document, she said, was prepared under the eyes of former chairman Andrew McIntosh. She said it took her about eight months to find a "good" chairman (McIntosh) to help her get things sorted in the HDC. McIntosh was also horrified when he assumed the position of chairman, she said. The minister said the HDC had since made significant advancements to bring it in alignment with what sound governance should look like. When contacted yesterday, Rowley said: "I have no comment to make on anything the housing minister has to say."