The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) is call­ing on the board of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Ltd (Ude­cott) to ac­count to the pub­lic about how it man­aged the af­fairs of the State en­ter­prise. In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said, "In the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, the rest of the Ude­cott board must give an ac­count of its stew­ard­ship, in the con­text of prop­er gov­er­nance and the re­spon­si­b­li­ty for pub­lic funds en­trust­ed to it, in or­der to dis­pel fur­ther doubts and con­cerns and re­gain pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence." The TTCIC said it be­lieved the Ude­cott board should jus­ti­fy how it con­duct­ed Ude­cott's af­fairs.

"The time has come for the board of Ude­cott to come for­ward to ex­plain its po­si­tion with re­spect to the award of ten­ders, con­flicts of in­ter­est and the use of pub­lic funds. Hart of­fi­cial­ly re­signed as chair­man of Ude­cott on March 6. He al­so re­signed from five State boards–Ude­cott, Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd and Home Mort­gage Bank.

On March 10, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie an­nounced a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Hart had be­gun in Sep­tem­ber 2009. "The coun­try has a right to know why the Ude­cott board thinks that it has act­ed in ac­cor­dance with best prac­tice gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples, in light of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's dis­clo­sure that a crim­i­nal probe was qui­et­ly launched last Sep­tem­ber, the rul­ing by Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Amor­er," the TTCIC said. The TTCIC al­so said it was en­cour­aged by the ap­point­ment of Jear­lean John as chair­man of Ude­cott.

Much-await­ed Uff re­port

On March 8, the cham­ber said it was "pleased" at Dean-Ar­mor­er's judge­ment, which dis­missed the ju­di­cial re­view filed by Ude­cott. The cham­ber said the judge­ment "ef­fec­tive­ly clears the way for the re­port of the John Uff Com­mis­sion" to be for­ward­ed to the Pres­i­dent and then laid in Par­lia­ment. In its ear­li­er state­ment, the cham­ber said, "This will al­low the coun­try to hear the much-await­ed find­ings of the com­mis­sion."

In its ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion, Ude­cott said the com­pa­ny and its chair­man were treat­ed with bias dur­ing the en­quiry. The Uff Com­mis­sion had de­cid­ed it would not sub­mit its re­port be­fore a judge­ment on the ju­di­cial re­view case was de­liv­ered. TTCIC said Dean-Ar­mor­er's judge­ment was time­ly be­cause "it comes in the midst of fresh al­leged ev­i­dence com­ing to hand, which gives rise to a per­ceived con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween the then chair­man of Ude­cott and Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Ltd.

Ude­cott had signed $820 mil­lion worth of pub­lic sec­tor con­tracts with Sun­way Con­struc­tion. The al­leged ev­i­dence, con­tained in doc­u­ments sourced by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), point­ed to strong links, through birth and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates, be­tween Sher­rine Hart, wife of Calder Hart, and two Sun­way Con­struc­tion di­rec­tors.

"The cham­ber hopes the Uff Com­mis­sion will now be al­lowed to present its re­port to the Pres­i­dent with­out fur­ther de­lay, and that the re­port will be laid in Par­lia­ment for de­bate ex­pe­di­tious­ly, in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty," the TTCIC said. The TTCIC said it was im­per­a­tive for the Uff re­port to be ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed "in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic's right to know" and as an in­di­ca­tion Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to re­spon­si­ble gov­er­nance at the lev­el of all State boards.