Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is adamant that the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts on Chancery Lane, Port-of-Spain, will be com­plet­ed in time for next month's Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM). He made the com­ment at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's par­ty head­quar­ters, Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, mo­ments af­ter tour­ing the Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre. In a brief in­ter­view last­ing no more than a few sec­onds, Man­ning said he was late for his sched­uled meet­ing. "I have a cen­tral (ex­ec­u­tive) meet­ing to at­tend and I am late," he said, as he quick­ly pro­ceed­ed in­to Bal­isi­er House. Asked if, based on what he saw yes­ter­day, he was con­fi­dent the fa­cil­i­ty would be com­plet­ed in time for CHOGM, Man­ning said: "Very much so." He said he just wit­nessed "a pre­sen­ta­tion on the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments for CHOGM, which are al­so well in hand."

He again stressed the Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre "will be fin­ished in time, yes, it will be." Re­porters were al­so seek­ing an­swers to ques­tions about the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) which man­ages Gov­ern­ment's mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion projects. Man­ning had been tak­en on the tour of the Acad­e­my by Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart. The PM did not look un­du­ly con­cerned about the calls for Hart's res­ig­na­tion or for le­gal ac­tion to be tak­en, based on ev­i­dence giv­en in the sus­pend­ed Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor. TV video last night showed Man­ning and Hart shak­ing hands at the end of the vis­it yes­ter­day. Sources said yes­ter­day that the vis­it was in­tend­ed to give Man­ning a first-hand view of the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar cen­tre which was ex­pect­ed to be used for a gala cul­tur­al event dur­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) next month. The fa­cil­i­ty is months be­hind the orig­i­nal sched­uled com­ple­tion date.

Ques­tions ini­tial­ly on his im­pres­sions af­ter the tour, Man­ning said he was sat­is­fied the project would be ready in time for a gala cul­tur­al event dur­ing the his­toric host­ing of the CHOGM. More than 50 heads of gov­ern­ment/state, in­clud­ing Queen Eliz­a­beth II, are ex­pect­ed to be in the coun­try for the three-day event, main­ly tak­ing place at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. He al­so de­clined com­ment on calls for the dis­missal of the board of Ude­cott. He ar­rived at Bal­isi­er House at 5.30 pm for a meet­ing of the PNM's cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive.