It is wrong for people to demand that Government cause the Director of Public Prosecutions and the police to investigate and lock up people at the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd (UDeCOTT) ’on the basis of unproven allegations’.
’If the Government were to do that, the Members opposite will be the first to say that we are interfering in the role and function of the DPP, that we are getting involved in prosecutions, that we are getting involved in police business,’ Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert said yesterday, while speaking during the debate on the Validation and Immunity Bill in the House of Representatives at the Red House, Port of Spain.
’Today is Calder Hart, tomorrow is you... that is going to set the stage for anarchy... for a police state. We reject those demands,’ he said.
Imbert also stated that the Academy for the Performing Arts flowed from a memorandum of understanding executed by the United National Congress in 1999 between the Trinidad and Tobago Government and the government of People’s Republic of China.
He said the UNC-executed agreement flowed into another agreement executed by the People’s National Movement in May 2006, while Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley was a member of the Cabinet.
’So all of this, the use of Chinese contractors... has been in the public domain now for years. There is no mystery to all of this... As I said, my colleague (Rowley) is just too close to some of the major players associated with the commission of enquiry and has lost some of his objectivity,’ Imbert said.
The Minister also said Calder Hart was not chairman of the Home Mortgage Bank when it arranged a loan for $170 million for UDeCOTT to purchase the National Union of Government and Federated Workers’ Union (NUGFW) property, as was alleged by Rowley.
Rowley had raised questions also about the discrepancy between the loan of $170 million and the contract sum of $134 million.
Yesterday, Imbert said Hart became chairman of the HMB in late 2008. He said the $134 million was VAT-exclusive.
’You would have to add another $20-odd million (for VAT)... and when you add the interest charges during construction, legal fees, stamp duty, project management fees and so on, it is easy to see how the financing for the project would be of the order of $170 million.’
Tobago West MP Stanford Callender, speaking afterward, said that as he sat in the debate, he found it very ironic that ’those on the other side seem to have a passion of egging on and creating discord within the PNM.
’I say to my colleagues that one has to take serious note that while that is happening, they are seeking to coalesce, forgive and so on. There has to be a reason for that. All of a sudden, somebody in the PNM (Rowley) is their friend so they could join and hold hands for the first time. That is just a word of caution and advice that I want to give,’ he said.
Callender said for years, the people of Tobago suffered for a modern hospital and he was happy when the sod turned for the Scarborough Hospital in 2003. He said the contract was awarded to NH International Construction (NHIC) at the cost somewhere in the vicinity of $135.9 million, with a completion date of about two years. He said in a matter of two years, the cost reached $400 million and Government had to intervene.
He said he was proud to say that for the first time in eight years there was some predictability toward the completion of the project, which has since been awarded to China Railway.
