The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) has be­gun for­mal as­sess­ments of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Res­i­dence in To­ba­go ahead of planned re­me­di­al works.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter and UDe­COTT’s line min­is­ter Jear­lean John MP toured the res­i­dence on Sun­day, along­side UDe­COTT Chair­man Shankar Bidaisee, Deputy Chair­man Pe­ter M. Kan­hai, and Fa­cil­i­ties Man­ag­er Ry­dell Ma­habir.

The walk-through be­gan short­ly be­fore 9:00 am and in­clud­ed in­spec­tions of the com­pound, the main build­ing, and ad­join­ing struc­tures that house staff and mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. It con­clud­ed around 10:00 am with a plan­ning ses­sion to doc­u­ment nec­es­sary works and chart the next steps.

Of­fi­cials con­firmed that key re­pairs will be re­quired across the res­i­dence and its premis­es. Among the items dis­cussed were fol­low-up site vis­its to com­plete a full-scale as­sess­ment, de­vel­op­ment of a Scope of Works, es­tab­lish­ment of a project sched­ule and mile­stones, and ex­e­cu­tion of ex­ten­sive re­pairs.

Bidaisee said UDe­COTT stands ready to de­liv­er all works with­in time and bud­get to en­sure val­ue for mon­ey.

The site vis­it fol­lows the re­turn of week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ings to the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, which had been in dis­use since the last gov­ern­ment’s tenure. The new­ly elect­ed UNC Gov­ern­ment had ini­tial­ly re­lo­cat­ed meet­ings to the Red House, cit­ing the poor state of the fa­cil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre was re­cent­ly re­fur­bished by UDe­COTT to host an of­fi­cial re­cep­tion for In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di. Up­grades in­clude a re­designed press room with a new head ta­ble in na­tion­al colours and im­proved me­dia seat­ing.

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Nicholas Mor­ris, who host­ed Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, said the fa­cil­i­ty had been “cleaned up.”

“As this Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing across the coun­try, we have en­gaged in a na­tion­al cam­paign to fix our in­sti­tu­tions, our laws, and our so­ci­ety. I think this (Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre) is a clear demon­stra­tion of our com­mit­ment to clean up what we met,” Mor­ris said.