Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

At least one mem­ber of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) board says it ap­pears to be a po­lit­i­cal act to re­place all board mem­bers ex­cept for chair­man Jear­lean John. An­tho­ny Cher­ry yes­ter­day de­scribed the an­nounce­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to change the re­main­ing four Ude­cott board mem­bers as "reck­less" and "un­fair." Cher­ry said he wished le­gal re­course was avail­able for him to counter his re­moval from the Ude­cott board. "They asked me to help out and I agreed. If you get tarred and feath­ered for help­ing out, well so be it. But why burn me at the stake? I am just try­ing to help out," Cher­ry said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Cher­ry said the Gov­ern­ment was "the boss" and "the boss has found it nec­es­sary to re­place his staff." He said: "So they re­place their staff. It is their pre­rog­a­tive. It is a pret­ty thank­less job, isn't it?" He said that de­ci­sions to make changes to the Ude­cott board de­pend­ed from the per­spec­tive they were tak­en from. "It may be nec­es­sary be­cause from per­haps a po­lit­i­cal stand­point, it might be nec­es­sary but not from the point of view of our abil­i­ty or in­com­pe­tence or whether there is any­thing sus­pi­cious or any­thing like that," Cher­ry said.

"It is not nec­es­sary from the point of view that we are sort of a band of in­com­pe­tents," he said. Cher­ry dis­put­ed the find­ings of the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor that said since 2005 there was no dis­agree­ment from board mem­bers to the de­ci­sions Ude­cott's for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart made. "It is a con­clu­sion that is drawn by the com­mis­sion, but I dis­agree with it. I do not know on what ev­i­dence he (the com­mis­sion­er) has come to that con­clu­sion," he said. "He is en­ti­tled to come to that con­clu­sion but my an­swer to that is that I dis­agree."