The Human Development CEO also wanted to clarify why her Ministry was renting a building that is owned by the family of her Minister Anthony Boots Martinez.
You'll remember in last week Friday's House Meeting how the Leader of Opposition produced a document saying that the Ministry of Human Development has paid his family to the tune of 1.5 million dollars over a 5-year span.
Alpuche told the press today that she can only account for one instance in which the Women's Department needed office space. Here's her detailed account of why it was that the Government rented from the Minister's family:
Judith Alpuche - CEO, Ministry of Human Development
"If you look at the document you will see that none of those payments were made from the Ministry of Human Development. In smart stream, each ministry had its own code and the code for the Ministry of Human Development is HUWOC, so you can go back and see that none of those payments were made. There was a property that was rented as a temporary office for the Women's Department and I want to clarify how that came about. If you all are familiar with the old Albert Street property that was the old cottage industry office, that building was literally condemned. Public health went in and said, you need to bulldoze this building and start again. There were a couple of things going on in terms of the amount of mould and just repairs to the building and despite the valiant effort of the last director, it just could not be fixed. The mould infestation was making people literally sick. The issue really became critical when we had a project come onboard and the funding meant that we could bring on between 10 and 12 more officers to run this project and there was literally nowhere to put them. We could not find anywhere that was big enough, that was centrally located for clients, that was reasonable also in terms of the cost and that building was identified. The Ministry of Human Development, no ministry enters into contracts for rental of office space and so the Ministry of Public Service that has that oversight, went in, did the due diligence, decided that it was within their parameters and it was rented as a temporary space and I think the rent was around 4,800 thereabout a month. Two floors that housed over 25 staff. We were able to secure funds with the help of the Ministry of Tourism and I must thank CEO Dujon for that through the ICDF downtown rejuvenation project and we literally built a new building and as soon as that building was ready, we moved. So that is the story there in terms of the rental of that building. It is not something that was a first choice, it was a last resort really in terms of really having to move because of the health concerns because we just didn't have the physical space and not being able to find another building that would fit our purposes and it was temporary. So, it's the rental of properties and millions of dollars, I have no idea about that, I can only tell you as it relates to the Ministry of Human Development."
