Richard Lord

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) Vic­tor Hart has wel­comed the de­ci­sion by Ken­neth Sir­ju, mem­ber of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor, to re­cuse him­self from the probe on mat­ter re­lat­ing to the Cleaver Heights Hous­ing Project in Ari­ma. Sir­ju's de­ci­sion was tak­en af­ter the sub­mis­sion of a let­ter by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) to the com­mis­sion, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing in a con­flict of in­ter­est.

Ude­cott said the con­flict of in­ter­est arose be­cause Sir­ju's en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny KS&P pro­vid­ed pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices to con­trac­tor NH In­ter­na­tion­al on the Cleaver Heights project and he was now sit­ting in judg­ment of mat­ters re­lat­ed to the very project. "Clear­ly Com­mis­sion­er Sir­ju made the right de­ci­sion in the greater na­tion­al in­ter­est and should be ap­plaud­ed," Hart said. He said Sir­ju's de­ci­sion to re­cuse him­self from all mat­ters re­lat­ing to Cleaver Heights has "re­moved the ob­sta­cle that might have pre­vent­ed the con­tin­u­a­tion and com­ple­tion of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor."

Hart said the TT­TI wel­comed that de­vel­op­ment. He said the TT­TI was con­cerned that af­ter spend­ing many mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars, the in­quiry might have been abort­ed. Hart said while he was hap­py that the in­quiry would con­tin­ue, he was con­cerned that Ude­cott had been al­lowed by the Gov­ern­ment to use tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion to chal­lenge the work of a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed in­quiry. Hart said he had hoped that the Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Ude­cott, Dr Emi­ly Dick-Forde would have in­ter­vened and told Ude­cott to de­sist from such ac­tions.