Tuesday, May 13 2008

UDECOTT chairman Calder Hart has been unable to address the heated controversy surrounding the operation of the billion-dollar special purpose state enterprise because he has been suffering from a “hacking cough” due to a virus he is recovering from.

Pulling out a small bottle of Menthodex Cough Mixture, Hart yesterday told the press that he has thus far kept his silence in the controversy surrounding Udecott because he has been coughing all the time.

“I’ve been fighting a virus for the last couple of weeks. As a matter of fact I got my cough syrup here,” Hart told reporters shortly after attending yesterday’s Break-fast with the Prime Minister event at Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain.

He showed reporters the bottle and then quickly put it back into his right jacket pocket. The bottle was also prominently displayed on Hart’s table in the Crowne Plaza ballroom.

Hart said Udecott will be holding a press conference to answer all questions in relation to the company tomorrow as his cough improves.

“Primarily the problem is that I can’t seem to get past two of three minutes without starting to cough in hacks. But hopefully I’ll be done by Wednesday and we’ll be ready to face your questions and to give you proper answers,” Hart told reporters in a clear but low tone after speaking for about four minutes without coughing.

Breaking his silence for the first time since Keith Rowley, the sacked Trade and Industry Minister, said he had been dismissed by Prime Minister Patrick Manning over the issue of inadequate Cabinet oversight of Udecott, Hart said Udecott’s billion-dollar mega projects must be viewed in context of its government mandate. He asserted that the entity was not special and remains accountable to the Government,

Asked if he thought the corporation had too much power, he said, “Well you have to look at it from the context of what is the Government’s development programme and the question of whether Udecott has been able to deliver.”

He signaled that Udecott, which has been at work on several infrastructural projects, may even extend its reaches into several social projects. He cited the fact that the Belmont police station started construction at the same time as the waterfront project but is not yet complete as an example of why Udecott is needed.

“The big thing that we have to do now is going into the whole sector of social and physical infrastructure because I think what the Prime Minister elucidated here today was the fact that when you have a police station that starts at the same time and the people of Belmont — and that area of St Ann’s, Cascade is an area that I happen to live in — can’t be served, there’s a problem.”

“We have to find methodology and that’s why we’re moving to different methodologies, we have to get the hospitals built, we have to get the fire stations, police stations and all of the other infrastructure built,” he said.

At yesterday’s event Manning defended special purpose enterprises, saying they were needed to avoid the bureaucracy of the public sector. Asked if he thought procedure was a means of protecting the interest of taxpayers, Hart said,“What is different with Udecott? There is very little different, there’s still the regulatory apparatus of the State...Nobody is exempt from that regulatory oversight, okay? But we’ll go in to the details on Wednesday.”