Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Hous­ing, Plan­ning and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter, Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde, both dis­missed al­le­ga­tions of nepo­tism in the award of mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts to Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Lim­it­ed, the firm linked to the wife of ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott), Calder Hart. "There is ab­solute­ly no ev­i­dence that the head of Sun­way is the broth­er-in-law of Calder Hart. "Where did you get that in­for­ma­tion? No­body has al­leged that the head of Sun­way is the broth­er-in-law of Mr Hart," Im­bert re­spond­ed to ques­tions at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence.

"The al­le­ga­tion that was made was that an­oth­er com­pa­ny was formed for the pur­pose of sub­mit­ting a ten­der and the con­tract was even­tu­al­ly award­ed to Sun­way." Im­bert added. It was al­leged that a Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Lim­it­ed af­fil­i­at­ed-firm, CH De­vel­op­ment and Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, list­ed its fax num­ber as 624-8239, Hart's for­mer per­son­al fax num­ber. There al­so were claims that two of the firm's of­fi­cials were rel­a­tives of Hart's wife, Sher­rine. Im­bert said Sun­way was a large mul­ti-na­tion­al com­pa­ny. He said he had met the var­i­ous di­rec­tors of Sun­way and was cer­tain none of them were re­lat­ed to Hart.

His com­ments were echoed by Hous­ing, Plan­ning and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter, Emi­ly Gaynor Dicke-Forde, who said she had no prob­lem with Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Lim­it­ed re­ceiv­ing a $300 mil­lion con­tract to out­fit the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­istry. "They (Ude­cott) clear­ly showed that they went through a process in award­ing that con­tract and I have no prob­lems with it," Dick-Forde said. She added: "And for the record, I do not be­lieve a line min­is­ter should en­ter in­to mat­ters that were ten­dered and a process that went through a board." Dick-Forde was un­able to re­spond to ques­tions about the dates sur­round­ing the award of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract to Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Lim­it­ed.