The commission of inquiry into UDeCOTT and the construction sector resumes Monday with the focus on the controversial Cleaver Heights housing project in Arima.
The commission will also be looking at links between UDeCOTT executive chairman Calder Hart and the award of $638 million in contracts to a company to which he is alleged to have close family ties.
The hearings had been suspended due to an administrative error, which had rendered the commission's work invalid. The authorities had overlooked a legal provision for the probe to be gazetted.
Government fixed the problem by introducing a Validation bill in Parliament to allow the commission's work to continue. But there was a further delay when UDeCOTT took legal action and obtained a stay from the High Court ordering a freeze on the hearing of further evidence and even the “preparation” of a final report.
Another problem was that the term of the commissioners would expire before UDeCOTT's legal matter came up before the courts.
However, the problems were sorted out and President Richards extended the life of the commission, giving its members until Feb. 28 to present him with a report.
Read the story: Uff commission extended, president wants report by Feb. 28
The Cleaver Heights project was put in the spotlight by Prime Minister Patrick Manning who went to Parliament and insisted that his former cabinet colleague Keith Rowley explain why $10 million was missing from the project. He later stated the figure was double that.
Rowley was the housing minister at the time. A probe conducted by government authorities concluded that no money was missing and the confusion was caused by a clerical error. Both Rowley and the contractor for the project produced their own documents to support the contention that nothing was wrong.
But when the internal report was presented to the commission, the housing minister objected to it and the person responsible for the report subsequently resigned.
Former PNM treasurer Louis Andre Monteil, who was chairman of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) responsible for Cleaver Heights and former HDC managing director Noel Garcia are scheduled to give evidence before the commission this week.
This final phase is also supposed to examine contracts for the Brian Lara Stadium, which is several years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
However the contractor, Hafeez Karamath, died suddenly last month, leaving doubts about whether the commission would be able to delve into a number of critical details.
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