Ques­tions are be­ing raised about the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) in­ten­tion to ac­quire the Palms Vil­las Re­sort near the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, for use as an on­col­o­gy cen­tre.

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris and for­mer Health Sec­re­tary Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus have called on the THA to jus­ti­fy the de­ci­sion, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges fac­ing the is­land.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Mor­ris con­demned the move, sug­gest­ing that the vil­la’s ac­qui­si­tion re­flects mis­placed pri­or­i­ties by the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.

The five vil­las, all three-bed­room build­ings, sit on eight acres and is list­ed for $19 mil­lion on­line.

Mor­ris felt the mon­ey could be bet­ter spent on press­ing health­care needs and im­prov­ing ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

“So, here you are say­ing you on­ly have $200 mil­lion for de­vel­op­ment and out of that $200 mil­lion, you have tak­en $20 mil­lion to pur­chase a prop­er­ty when you have lands right in Sig­nal Hill on the site of cur­rent hos­pi­tal you can use to build out this on­col­o­gy cen­tre. Even if you don’t find Sig­nal Hill ap­pro­pri­ate, there is the old hos­pi­tal.”

He raised sus­pi­cions about the deal and the po­ten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

“We al­so need to know who ne­go­ti­at­ed this deal and what pay­ment was made to the lawyer or mid­dle agent in­volved. We are con­cerned about who stands to ben­e­fit from this pur­chase, es­pe­cial­ly since the prop­er­ty own­ers live abroad, mean­ing the $20 mil­lion is leav­ing the To­ba­go econ­o­my.”

He ques­tioned the long-term costs of retro­fitting the vil­las for their in­tend­ed use.

“If they are to retro­fit those vil­las, then they would have to de­mol­ish the vil­las that they just paid $20 mil­lion for, and re­build a whole new build-out for this on­col­o­gy cen­tre,” he said.

Mean­while, Tsoiafatt-An­gus, a for­mer Health Sec­re­tary un­der the PNM-led THA, de­mand­ed trans­paren­cy, not­ing that such a sig­nif­i­cant spend war­rants pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and a clear ex­pla­na­tion of its im­por­tance at this time.

“You talk to the end users, en­sure they pro­vide their specks, how they op­er­ate, their pro­ce­dur­al plan and then you build the cen­tre. Pur­chas­ing vil­las to retro­fit will cost you as much to pur­chase,” she said.

“As some­one who was part of the com­mis­sion­ing of the new hos­pi­tal at Sig­nal Hill, I know the hos­pi­tal sits on 27 acres of land and there are many spaces at the site that could be used for putting up the on­col­o­gy unit, HIV unit cen­tre, what­ev­er.”

She added: “This is where the IDA con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for some sort of over­sight body so that these ad­min­is­tra­tions just can’t do what they want with peo­ple mon­ey. We had enough of Ring Bang, we had enough of zi­pline and now we com­ing to this.”

In re­sponse, THA Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B.Yis­rael con­firmed that talks are on­go­ing for ex­pand­ing hos­pi­tal space.

“The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA), in ac­cept­ing its man­date to up­grade all as­pects of health­care de­liv­ery and pro­vi­sion in To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the up­grade of plant and ma­chin­ery, has been ad­vised by its stake­hold­ers of the need to se­cure the bound­aries of hos­pi­tal prop­er­ty and con­trol, where pos­si­ble, ad­ja­cent land us­age, so as to sup­port the pro­vi­sion of health­care ser­vices in an at­mos­phere con­ducive to heal­ing.”

She said the TRHA is in the ear­ly stages of dis­cus­sions with landown­ers near the hos­pi­tal to ad­dress these needs. How­ev­er, she did not con­firm whether the $19 mil­lion vil­la is among the prop­er­ties un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

Rather, she said dis­cus­sions are still “em­bry­on­ic” and not yet for­malised in­to con­tracts.

She briefly ex­plained that the ex­pan­sion was to “sup­port fu­ture growth over the next 15 to 20 years, con­sid­er­ing in­creas­ing health­care de­mand.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil re­cent­ly ap­proved the vil­la’s pur­chase af­ter near­ly a year of de­lib­er­a­tions. Sources re­vealed that the plan is to re­lo­cate units such as the Child and Ado­les­cent Cen­tre, Blue Room – Men’s Health Clin­ic, and Health Pro­mo­tion Clin­ic, On­col­o­gy and the Stroke and Di­a­betes Cen­tre.