The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) has been moved from the Min­istry of Hous­ing and is once again un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Dr Kei­th Row­ley is now the line min­is­ter in charge of the State com­pa­ny.

The last Prime Min­is­ter with di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for UDe­COTT’s mega projects was for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Patrick Man­ning.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pub­lished in the No­vem­ber 22 is­sue of the Gazette, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, act­ing on in­struc­tions from the Row­ley re­voked re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for UDe­COTT from Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and trans­ferred it to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

But just two weeks af­ter that trans­fer was com­plet­ed, Row­ley dis­missed ques­tions about the move “mis­in­for­ma­tion”.

Dur­ing the De­cem­ber 12 ses­sion of Par­lia­ment, Oropouche East Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal had asked Row­ley di­rect­ly whether he was now in charge of UDe­COTT.

Mooni­lal asked, “In light of the fact that San­dals was not pro­cured through nor­mal chan­nels, could the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cate whether UDe­COTT is the project man­ag­er and UDe­COTT is un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter”.

Row­ley said Mooni­lal was wrong.

“Madam Speak­er, I would just like to ask my col­league from Oropouche East to stop spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion. None of what he said is cor­rect,” Row­ley said.

The ques­tion was again posed by Ca­roni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh but he was shot down by the Speak­er of the House.

When Man­ning was line min­is­ter for UDe­COTT is was man­aged by Calder Hart and Row­ley was sanc­tioned, by hav­ing his Min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio re­voked, by Man­ning for speak­ing out about Hart’s al­leged mis­man­age­ment of the State re­sources un­der UDe­COTT.

In March 2010, two months be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, Hart sud­den­ly quit as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of UDe­COTT af­ter doc­u­ments link­ing him to a com­pa­ny that the UDe­COTT board award­ed an $820 mil­lion in con­tracts sur­faced. Hart left the coun­try with his fam­i­ly.

Guardian Me­dia asked Row­ley about the move and al­so what he planned to do dif­fer­ent­ly from Man­ning to en­sure that UDe­COTT does not make the same mis­takes. He did not re­spond to texts or calls.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to UDe­COTT chair­man, Noel Gar­cia, but he too did not re­spond to calls or texts seek­ing com­ment.