Former housing, planning and the environment minister Emily Dick-Forde says when the contract for the second phase of the Las Alturas housing development was signed between the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and China Jiangsu International Corp (CJIC), she was the minister.
Dick-Forde told CNC3, yesterday, “Based on the date that the Prime Minister read out for the signing of the contract between the Board of Directors and the contractor to begin construction then I was the minister.” Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said in Parliament on Thursday that the contract for phase two of the project was signed on January 24, 2008, between the HDC and CJIC.
A commission of enquiry is to be established to see if any civil or criminal proceedings should be brought because two buildings in the project had to be demolished after cracks were discovered. Persad-Bissessar said the country must know which of the former PNM ministers were in office when the project, which she said was a disaster, was constructed.
Dick-Forde said both Persad-Bissessar and Opposition leader Keith Rowley were failing to inform the public properly on the project. According to Dick-Forde, the signing of a contract for work to be done by a state agency does not involve a minister within the governance arrangements of the country. She explained that it was the board of directors and the management of the state corporation which were charged with the governing and management of a state corporation.
She said a minister could not sign contracts that would bind the corporation. “Additionally, approval from Cabinet for the construction is where the minister comes in and that is what needs to be perused,” she added. According to Dick-Forde, the requirement was “not so much to see which minister took it but was the minister and the Cabinet informed in that Cabinet note of the problems with the site when it was taken for approval.”
She said approval for a site to be developed usually occurred at times years in advance and not just before construction. Dick-Forde said the politicians, instead of educating the public on how things were done or should be done, were playing games.
“As an accounting academic, I remain appalled at the backward approach that is taken on these issues and the political games that play out at the great expense to taxpayers in whose name, ironically and unfortunately, these games are purportedly to benefit,”she said. Dick-Forde declined comment on the commission of enquiry into the project, saying that was the call of the Prime Minister.
Dick-Forde said journalists had a responsibility not just to say what each person said on an issue but to bring their own critical analysis to the matter. 0“We need to break free from these unhealthy and, at times, hypocritical exchanges and get to the real heart of the issues for the benefit of a fair and just society,” Dick-Forde said.
