Hart awaiting PM's reply

SIX days after delivering a letter to the Prime Minister calling for the publication of the 2003 report on the Piarco Airport expansion project, former commissioner Victor Hart on Monday told Newsday he had not yet received a reply from Dr Rowley.

He told Newsday he is one of three surviving members of the commission of inquiry into the Piarco controversy.

Hart said former chairman retired former chief justice Clinton Bernard had died several years ago and commissioner Peter Bynoe, an architect, had died during the course of the inquiry. He said the surviving commissioners were himself, engineer Keith Sirju and accountant Marie Ange Knight.

Hart is a retired quantity surveyor and project manager.

In a recent statement sent to media houses when he sent his letter to Rowley on March 28, Hart said he found it "impossible to remain silent" amid the myth being advanced that cases before local courts were due to political persecution rather than based on evidence presented to the commission and investigated by the police.

Hart, in his statement declared, "Without any shadow of a doubt, I can confirm that the evidence presented to the enquiry was free of any political bias and that there was no political interference in the enquiry’s conduct or in the conclusions drawn by the commissioners and the recommendations we made.

"I say that without fear of contradiction and I totally reject the assertion about political persecution.”

Newsday did not get any reply from Rowley to our query on Monday as to whether he would publish the report.