Richard Lord

Days be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 7 sched­uled re­sump­tion of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has again de­fend­ed Ude­cott and ex­tend­ed an olive branch to lo­cal con­trac­tors, say­ing he didn't want any war with them. The John Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was set up af­ter wide­spread ex­pres­sions of con­cern over the op­er­a­tions of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), which man­aged most of the Gov­ern­ment's bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion projects.

Speak­ing dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing at Wendy Fitzwilliam Boule­vard, Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin, on Mon­day night, Man­ning said: "The dis­pute that has bro­ken out be­tween the con­struc­tion sec­tor and the Gov­ern­ment is that the Gov­ern­ment is no longer pre­pared to al­low some prac­tices that have de­vel­oped in that in­dus­try to dri­ve what hap­pens in this coun­try. "The dis­pute that has bro­ken out be­tween Ude­cott and oth­ers is noth­ing more than an at­tempt by Ude­cott to bring about change in our so­ci­ety, change in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, that is what it is all about," the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He said ear­li­er the Gov­ern­ment was pay­ing too much for the ser­vices it got from the lo­cal con­trac­tors. "We are not get­ting those ser­vices on time and there are oc­ca­sions in which some big ques­tion marks arise out of their qual­i­ty (of work)...We're not look­ing for any war." Dur­ing his ad­dress, Man­ning de­scribed for­mer trade min­is­ters Ken Val­ley and Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as two great politi­cians pro­duced by Diego Mar­tin. Row­ley was sacked in April last year over dif­fer­ences of opin­ion with Ude­cott's ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart. Row­ley is still MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, while Val­ley has re­tired from ac­tive pol­i­tics.

But Row­ley, who at­tend­ed the PNM meet­ing, re­spond­ed in an in­ter­view to Man­ning's de­fence of Ude­cott. He said based on the facts avail­able in the pub­lic do­main, he "will nev­er ac­cept" Man­ning's po­si­tion. He said it was "quite shock­ing and dis­turb­ing" that Man­ning re­mains res­olute in his de­fence of the com­pa­ny. Row­ley said Man­ning was es­sen­tial­ly "try­ing to jus­ti­fy what ought not to be jus­ti­fied." Row­ley said he had "a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence with the Prime Min­is­ter on is­sues of gov­er­nance of Ude­cott and we will nev­er agree on Ude­cott as far as that is­sue was con­cerned."

A pos­i­tive step says as­so­ci­a­tion

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Mick­ey Joseph says he wel­comes Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's com­ment, which he said was "a pos­i­tive step." Speak­ing dur­ing a PNM pub­lic meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin, Mon­day night, Man­ning said the dis­pute be­tween Ude­cott and oth­ers came about be­cause the spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny was seek­ing to make changes in the sec­tor in the best in­ter­est of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Joseph said his as­so­ci­a­tion was nev­er in any war with any­one, but had some se­ri­ous con­cerns about the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.