Fran­cis Joseph

?Hours be­fore the end of the 11-month-old Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor, Jus­tice An­tho­ny Lucky hand­ed in a bulky re­port to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, lay­ing blame on cer­tain peo­ple over the fail­ure to gazette the in­quiry, as re­quired by the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act..

Lucky, a re­tired Court of Ap­peal Judge, was ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net on Sep­tem­ber 11 to in­ves­ti­gate who fouled up the pro­ce­dure which could have de­railed the ex­pen­sive in­quiry af­ter nu­mer­ous wit­ness­es had tes­ti­fied and sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence ad­duced. Lucky, who is a judge of the In­ter­na­tion­al Tri­bunal for the Law of the Sea (IT­LOS), hand­ed over the re­port yes­ter­day to Je­re­mie at Ca­bil­do Cham­bers at 9.45 am. But he re­mained tight-lipped when leav­ing the AG's of­fice, say­ing the mat­ter was con­fi­den­tial and sug­gest­ed that the me­dia con­sult with the AG. The T&T Guardian learnt that the re­port would be tak­en be­fore Cab­i­net to­day, and once ap­proved, would be laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­mor­row. The re­port dealt with the ques­tion of the gazetting of in­quiries be­fore they got un­der way. It cit­ed sev­er­al in­stances here in Trinidad, the Caribbean and abroad, to show that such a "sim­ple" pro­ce­dure must be adopt­ed be­fore com­mis­sion­ers sit and hear ev­i­dence.

Al­though ap­point­ed in Sep­tem­ber, Lucky was un­able to con­duct the probe be­fore, as he was abroad on IT­LOS busi­ness. But as soon as he re­turned, he got the man­date to in­ter­view peo­ple. Among those in­ter­viewed were the full le­gal team ap­point­ed to the Uff Com­mis­sion–Seenath Jairam, SC, Ian Roach, Ker­wyn Gar­cia, Garvin Si­mon­ette and Mar­vo Harp­er. At a lo­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain, Lucky al­so in­ter­viewed peo­ple in the AG's of­fice, con­nect­ed with the Com­mis­sion. In the end, the re­tired judge com­piled his re­port, lay­ing blame at the feet of cer­tain peo­ple, whom he felt should not have been com­pla­cent, thus en­sur­ing that a sim­ple pro­ce­dure of gazetting was per­formed. Lucky, in his re­port, made rec­om­men­da­tions, which, if adopt­ed by Cab­i­net, would en­sure that fu­ture in­quiries were not threat­ened and/or de­railed be­cause of a sim­i­lar prob­lem.

Back­ground

?On Sep­tem­ber 9, 2008, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards ap­point­ed four peo­ple as com­mis­sion­ers to in­quire in­to cer­tain mat­ters in re­la­tion to the con­struc­tion sec­tor.The com­mis­sion be­gan sit­ting and heard open­ing state­ments on Jan­u­ary 12, 2009, and had, up to Sep­tem­ber, held three sets of hear­ings dur­ing the course of which a sub­stan­tial amount of in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived by the Com­mis­sion­ers by way of writ­ten state­ments, oral tes­ti­mo­ny un­der oath, and round-ta­ble dis­cus­sions, on some eight items of the terms of ref­er­ence.

Days be­fore the start of the fi­nal set of hear­ings on Sep­tem­ber 7, it was dis­cov­ered that the com­mis­sion had not been gazetted as is re­quired by Sec­tion 15 of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2008, when the com­mis­sion was es­tab­lished.��As a re­sult, Je­re­mie went to Par­lia­ment and got both Hous­es to pass the Val­i­da­tion Act, and which was as­sent­ed to on No­vem­ber 3. This gave the com­mis­sion a retroac­tive ef­fect, mean­ing that all the ev­i­dence tak­en be­fore the er­ror was dis­cov­ered was still valid. The fourth and fi­nal phase start­ed on Mon­day and end­ed yes­ter­day, with chair­man John Uff, QC, promis­ing to pro­duce his re­port by the end of Feb­ru­ary 2010.