Richard Lord

State-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), has con­firmed tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor, claim­ing that some un­named com­mis­sion­ers have ex­hib­it­ed "bias" against it. The con­fir­ma­tion came yes­ter­day in a re­lease is­sued by Ude­cott's spokesman, Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton-Whyms. She said last Fri­day Ude­cott filed for a ju­di­cial re­view of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry.

Sta­ple­ton-Whyms said the ac­tion was "seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the pro­ceed­ings of the com­mis­sion have been bi­ased against Ude­cott." Ude­cott said that be­cause of this al­leged bias, it had been de­prived of "a fair and im­par­tial hear­ing." The com­mis­sion of en­quiry, chaired by British ju­rist, Prof John Uff, was ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards last year, and be­gan pub­lic hear­ings in Jan­u­ary. It has held three rounds of hear­ings. A fourth round, which was sched­uled to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 7, was sus­pend­ed by Uff, be­cause a le­gal re­quire­ment to pub­lish the ap­point­ment of the com­mis­sion in the T&T Gazette, was not met.

It has since been gazetted, and Par­lia­ment is to de­bate short­ly a bill to val­i­date the work of the com­mis­sion. Ude­cott has con­stant­ly claimed bias against it, re­sult­ing in a de­ci­sion by one com­mis­sion­er (Is­rael Khan) to re­sign last month. A sec­ond com­mis­sion­er, Ken­neth Sir­ju, al­so de­cid­ed to re­cuse him­self from the in­quiry in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the Cleaver Heights Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Project in Ari­ma, be­cause his com­pa­ny, KS&P, had done work for con­trac­tor NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Ltd on that project.

Sta­ple­ton-Whyms said the lat­est le­gal ac­tion "in no way rep­re­sents any at­tempt by Ude­cott to chal­lenge or un­der­mine the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to ini­ti­ate the com­mis­sion, or the ac­tions tak­en by the State to val­i­date the hear­ings thus far. "How­ev­er, like any oth­er com­pa­ny or cit­i­zen, Ude­cott is en­ti­tled to equal treat­ment and fair play." Ude­cott added that it was en­ti­tled to take what­ev­er ini­tia­tives avail­able to it to up­hold its le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.