Ganga hits new works firm

“WHAT’S wrong with that?” asked Prime Minister Patrick Manning as he defended a $63 million loan made by the Urban Development Corporation (UdeCott) to the National Housing Authority (NHA). He was responding to Opposition charges of governmental impropriety yesterday in the House of Representatives. The Opposition had first raised the matter in the Senate on Tuesday where they alleged the money had been used to pay thugs and ghost gangs in the painting of NHA apartments. The issue was taken up in the House yesterday by Opposition chief whip Ganga Singh who challenged the Government to explain the “purity” of the loan. “When you see that kind of crossover you say it was wrong for TIDCO (under the UNC regime), but that it is okay for Udecott to do very much the same thing.”

Manning rose. “If it is that one State enterprise uses its favourable balance sheet to raise money and to make that money, on behalf of the Government, available to another State enterprise, what is wrong with that?” Singh hit back sarcastically: “When the PNM does it, nothing is wrong with it.” Manning retorted: “That’s not what they (UNC regime) did. We are still trying to disentangle MTS (National Maintenance Training Company).  TIDCO is a company, which as a consequence of that inept programme, had to be radically and substantially changed.”

Manning added that the regional health authorities, particularly the NWRHA, had been corrupted as a consequence of the approaches the UNC regime had taken. He assured: “We are not doing any such thing. We are trying to use mechanisms that are legitimate to facilitate the smooth conduct of Government business.” Singh opened another front. “The firing of Nipdec as project manager in the Scarborough Hospital will not cure the problem there. The contractor ought to be fired.” Singh had earlier countered Junior Minister of Trade Diane Seukeran, who had criticised the former UNC regime for using TIDCO to oversee a national road paving programme.

Singh said the Government was now doing likewise. He said: “The current administration, under the honourable Member for Ortoire/Mayaro, is forming a State company to do exactly that. The National Infrastructure Development Company will have as part of its responsibilities the paving and whatever is associated with the Ministry of Works.” At that, Minister of Works Franklin Khan rose. In contrast to TIDCO having had various responsibilities, Khan said: “The fundamental difference is that we are creating a premier engineering and construction management firm whose core business is to do that.”