FORMER Urban Development Corporation (UDC) General Manager Joy Douglas, who resigned while on suspension from the entity at the start of a probe into its operations, has requested a hearing before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC).

“We have received from the former general manager a rather voluminous document and she is asking for the opportunity to appear before the committee,” PAC Chairman Audley Shaw told the committee during its meeting yesterday at Gordon House in Kingston.

Shaw was speaking in the wake of an admission by current UDC General Manager Desmond Malcolm that there was no penalty if United States-based venue management firm SMG — which was contracted in 2011 under Douglas’ watch to market the Montego Bay Conference Centre — failed to perform.

“… So she can also comment on what is here and other questions,” Shaw said, in referring the document to committee members which the Jamaica Observer was told is well over 270 pages.

Whether or not she will be granted that request is, however, to be decided.

“Procedurally the committee has to decide whether or not it will grant that request; it is not automatic,” Government Committee Member Fitz Jackson pointed out.

“Right; we have to see what’s in the document first,” the Opposition’s Everald Warmington added.

“That’s why I asked us to look at the document,” Shaw retorted.

Douglas was in October 2011 suspended with immediate effect as the board of directors opened a probe into the operations of the corporation.

The probe was triggered by a series of controversial events that had placed the UDC into the public spotlight.

The first occurred in August 2011 when the media reported Douglas as saying that the UDC had plans to forcibly acquire the Anglican Church-owned Nuttall Hospital lands near Cross Roads. However, a few weeks later, Douglas told the Observer that the UDC has since “met with the Anglicans and disabused them of any misunderstanding they may have had”.

The second controversy saw the UDC being scolded by the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament for the sale of 23 acres of beachfront property at Little Bloody Bay in Hanover. The committee argued that the property was sold for much less than it was valued and summoned the UDC to appear before the committee to answer questions.

In the penultimate controversy, the UDC was criticised by the Office of the Contractor General for agreeing to sell a property at 35 West Parade in downtown Kingston without advertising the property.

Douglas resigned in December 2011.