Gail Alexan­der

New Ude­cott chair­man Jear­lean John will be seek­ing to get the "to­tal pic­ture" on Ude­cott projects and oth­er as­pects of the con­tro­ver­sial state agency when she meets with the Ude­cott board to­day. John con­firmed this yes­ter­day af­ter po­lice searched Ude­cott's of­fices on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain. This fol­lowed a vis­it by po­lice to the Cas­cade home of for­mer Ude­cott chair­man Calder Hart ear­li­er in the morn­ing. John said she was in­formed of the po­lice search of Ude­cott's of­fices. "I was told about the po­lice search...If there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in progress, one has to al­low the com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ty to do its job," she said.

John con­firmed she had re­ceived some of the in­for­ma­tion about Ude­cott which she had re­cent­ly re­quest­ed from Ude­cott's chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Nee­lan­da Ram­paul, ahead of meet­ing with the Ude­cott board. John said she would start the process of mov­ing for­ward to ad­dress some is­sues when she meets with Ude­cott's board to­day. "The meet­ing will be a brief­ing ses­sion where board mem­bers will bring me up to date on things and I will al­so be ask­ing ques­tions based on what I'm read­ing and the in­for­ma­tion which I'm pre­sent­ed with," she said. Asked if she would be fo­cus­ing on the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) or Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba, John said: "I am look­ing at all projects."

She said she could not op­er­ate on a skew­ered ba­sis and would have to ex­am­ine all projects in­clud­ing non-con­tro­ver­sial ones as well as those that have caught the eye of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. "And my job must be on the ba­sis of good cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion," John said. "Some­times what is in the pub­lic do­main is just part of the in­for­ma­tion...So I'm hop­ing I will get the to­tal pic­ture to­day and we will have a sense of where we are. "I have a sense of where we're go­ing, but cer­tain­ly I want to give the board a chance to prop­er­ly brief me." John said she would be ask­ing the board about oth­er is­sues be­sides projects, in­clud­ing Ude­cott's hu­man re­sources and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

The is­sue of a new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer for Ude­cott, for in­stance, is among is­sues that would be dis­cussed to­day al­so, she said. John is car­ry­ing a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­i­ty dai­ly since af­ter deal­ing with Ude­cott she be­gan Tues­day to con­duct a round of meet­ings with HDC ten­ants in her ca­pac­i­ty as HDC's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer. She be­gan in Cou­va, fol­lowed by San Fer­nan­do and tonight she will be in Mal­oney. On the var­i­ous calls for the re­moval of the Ude­cott board, John main­tained she would work with the board since it was not her ''call'' to move or keep the group.

"Once I've ac­cept­ed the el­e­va­tion to ser­vice, I work with whomev­er is there and the board, as it stands, is what is there..It's not my man­date to move," she said. Yes­ter­day, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said the Ude­cott board should have stepped down since May 2008, when he had made cer­tain al­le­ga­tions and dis­clo­sures about Ude­cott.

"But board mem­bers con­tin­ued to de­fend the ac­tions of Ude­cott and the for­mer chair­man (Hart) who has now re­signed and that makes enough of a case for them to step down," he said. "This is a griev­ous in­jury to the coun­try, since the sit­u­a­tion is now al­most two years old."