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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Udecott chairman Jearlean John: $19b to be spent on 74 projects

by

20130522

With $19 bil­lion to be spent on 74 projects in the com­ing months, peo­ple in the con­struc­tion sec­tor have a "good bit of work" com­ing their way, says Jear­lean John, the chair of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott).

Speak­ing at the May 6 ap­point­ment of the new Ude­cott board at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, John said Ude­cott has a man­date to ex­e­cute 74 projects cost­ing just over $19 bil­lion.

In an in­ter­view on Tues­day at the of­fices of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), of which John is man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, she re­spond­ed to those in the con­struc­tion sec­tor who ar­gue that Ude­cott was re­spon­si­ble for heat­ing up the econ­o­my dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza.

John said: "It's not just more build­ings. The build­ings are use­ful build­ings. Ude­cott will con­tin­ue to do use­ful things. There are a num­ber of projects on Ude­cott's radar that will do tremen­dous good for the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

"The same peo­ple who are say­ing the con­struc­tion sec­tor (will) heat up, say­ing they have no work. We are not go­ing to go out there and do any­thing that in­jures the econ­o­my, cer­tain­ly, but we have to do our job. There is some ca­pac­i­ty now, a lot of re­dun­dan­cy in the sys­tem and we in­tend, be­tween Ude­cott and HDC, over the next three months to soak up a lot of that."

Among on­go­ing and new projects Ude­cott is re­spon­si­ble for:

On­go­ing projects HDC/Ude­cott:

-Chancery Lane hos­pi­tal

-Pres­i­dent's Cot­tage

-The Mag­ni­fi­cient Sev­en

-Par­lia­ment

-Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um

-Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza

-The On­col­o­gy Cen­tre

-Knowsley Build­ing

In the two-hour in­ter­view, John said Ude­cott and the HDC are soon ex­pect­ed to roll out their 2013 pro­gramme, which means there would be suf­fi­cient work to spread around to lo­cal con­trac­tors.

"These emp­ty build­ings, the ten­ders eval­u­at­ed and award­ed and the new projects start, it will soak up the main con­trac­tors, sub-con­trac­tors. I think the peo­ple in the con­struc­tion sec­tor they have a good bit of work com­ing their," John said.

Of the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against the Ude­cott board un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, that the still-to-be-oc­cu­pied Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza it em­ployed more Chi­nese than lo­cal labour, John said: "When you have gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments, there are con­di­tion­al­i­ties, so part of it, I be­lieve, I sup­pose, would have been they would have had to take some Chi­nese labour.

"What we would have been do­ing with these gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments since the Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal, we are ne­go­ti­at­ing a 50-50 (ra­tio of labour). What these com­pa­nies do is that they buy as much as they can from T&T, so you ne­go­ti­ate all of these things. Our peo­ple are em­ployed, but you al­so have the sup­pli­ers who are ben­e­fit­ing from the sales of the goods. You will have some el­e­ment of for­eign labour de­pend­ing on how the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment (con­tract) is ne­go­ti­at­ed and how rigid peo­ple are about it," she said.

Re­fer­ring to the Chancery Lane project op­po­site the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, John said the Aus­tri­an gov­ern­ment to­tal­ly used lo­cal labour, but their tech­ni­cal peo­plem who made up one per cent of the project's labour force.

She said the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent for the Chi­nese as "they still want to bring some el­e­ment of (Chi­nese labour) - a 50-50, that's what we ne­go­ti­at­ed so far." John said the un­em­ploy­ment in T&T is low at this point and it is an­tic­i­pat­ed when the HDC and Ude­cott roll out their 2013 pro­gramme, it may "soak up" labour in T&T. This means peo­ple who are un­der­em­ployed would be ful­ly em­ployed.

"What they -- mem­bers of the con­struc­tion sec­tor -- are to guard against is that con­struc­tion is cycli­cal. That is why when the con­struc­tion slowed down, a lot of peo­ple were out of work. It is a cycli­cal thing. When the con­struc­tion comes to an end, you have idle ca­pac­i­ty. Now we have some idle ca­pac­i­ty which we are go­ing to pick up with­in the next few months, I am sure," John said.

Ude­cott un­der a new board

John re­tained her chair­man­ship when the new board of Ude­cott was ap­point­ed on May 6. Sev­en new mem­bers were ap­point­ed, two for­mer mem­bers were re­tained.

The new board com­pris­es: Dr Stephen Pil­grim, Anil Bridglal, Mar­lon Mor­ris, An­tho­ny Gopaul, Prem Samod­ee, Aiye­goro Ome, Ren­nie Mo­hammed and Shankar Bidaisee.

Ear­li­er this year, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal told Par­lia­ment that Ude­cott in­vest­ed in the CL Fi­nan­cial Group. Re­spond­ing to this, John said there is a mech­a­nism to re­cov­er the mon­ey, but she fears Ude­cott may not get back all of its in­vest­ed funds.

"You are not go­ing to get all of the mon­ey. You are prob­a­bly go­ing to get $0.80 on the dol­lar or there­about. At the first board meet­ing, that was brought to the board. It was ap­proved, so now they would go to CL Fi­nan­cial. Of the $100 mil­lion, we would prob­a­bly re­cov­er $99.2 mil­lion. If we don't take the mon­ey now, we will not get it un­til 20 years from now."

Asked how the de­ci­sion to make the in­vest­ment in CL Fi­nan­cial came about, John said, "That was with the pre­vi­ous chair­man," re­fer­ring to Calder Hart. "The pre­vi­ous chair­man in­vest­ed that mon­ey in­to CL Fi­nan­cial."

Giv­en that Ude­cott is the project man­ag­er for most of Gov­ern­ment's projects, John was asked what would the $100 mil­lion be used for?

"That mon­ey re­al­ly was sup­posed to have been part of the mon­ey to fund the po­lice sta­tions. I don't know what the think­ing was. There was no doc­u­men­ta­tion to say, well, I can't re­call see­ing a board note or some­thing to say, well, the mon­ey is there sit­ting around and we could do a short-term in­vest­ment, we'll earn some mon­ey in the mean­time."

Asked what was done to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of such an in­vest­ment, John said no one can in­vest with­out first com­ing to the board for ap­proval. She as­sured that un­der her watch, there would be no re­peat of such an in­vest­ment.

Re­fer­ring to the HDC and its strate­gic di­rec­tion, John said she had vis­it­ed the cities of Del­hi and Ban­ga­lore in In­dia in Feb­ru­ary 201, along with Min­is­ter Mooni­lal and of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, to ex­am­ine var­i­ous mod­els of hous­ing de­vel­op­ment across there.

"I think Dr Mooni­lal is look­ing for mod­els wher­ev­er to see what else we can take from to put it in what we al­ready have," John said.

Par­lia­ment re­fur­bish­ment up­date:

"In the next four or five months, the work should have start­ed. The Red House would be ful­ly mo­bilised in terms of the restora­tion. All the things have been put in place. We have the restora­tion ar­chi­tect in place and now we are out to source the con­tract, if we don't al­ready have the con­tract in place. With­in the next four to five months, that project should be ful­ly mo­bilised, not com­plet­ed, com­ple­tion by 2015."

"We have Stollmey­er's Cas­tle and that should be com­ing to a con­clu­sion with­in the next three months or so. We have Knowsley. The board is now in place. We will be look­ing at scop­ing that work. Pres­i­dent's House is with the Min­istry of Works, we are hap­py that it's been sort­ed. We, hope­ful­ly, would get White­hall."


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