UDeCOTT Chairman Calder Hart said yesterday that as a "two-time cancer survivor", he had learnt to develop "a kind of internal fortitude" in dealing with a lot of things.

Hart was speaking to reporters after the "Breakfast with the Prime Minister" session at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Port of Spain.

Hart said he did not speak on the controversy swirling around the organisation he heads before now, because he was coping with a virus for the last couple of weeks.

Noting that Prime Minister Patrick Manning gave an "excellent speech", Hart said UDeCOTT was prepared to do its part in the whole developmental process. Asked whether the organisation had too much power, he said: "You have to look at it from the context of what is the Government's developmental programme and the question of whether UDeCOTT has been able to deliver. Now obviously with anything, there are issues and nothing is perfect. But we continue to learn and we continue to move ahead and that is exactly what the mandate is. We are trying to achieve it."

He said the "big issue" was putting the social infrastructure in place. We have to find methodologies, that is why we are moving to different methodologies because we have to get the hospitals, the fire stations, police stations and all the other infrastructure built," he said.

Hart said there was nothing different about UDeCOTT, (when compared with other special purpose state enterprises). It was subjected to the same regulatory apparatus and regulatory oversight, he said.

Hart, however, said he wanted to wait until UDeCOTT held its press conference tomorrow, to address all the questions from the media.