RYAN BA­CHOO

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lean John, is de­fend­ing Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion not to open the Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH), while giv­ing the me­dia a tour of the 12-storey build­ing yes­ter­day.

She al­so ques­tioned why the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion opt­ed to do a prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion.

While John said the re­de­vel­op­ment of the Cen­tral Block was 90 per cent com­plete, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who ac­com­pa­nied John on the tour, dis­agreed.

On some floors, the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem has to be in­stalled, but de­vel­op­ers said the equip­ment will not ar­rive for an­oth­er two months.

Much of the fur­ni­ture for the lob­by and oth­er ar­eas was al­so miss­ing. The new Cen­tral Block is a 540-bed fa­cil­i­ty con­struct­ed south of the ex­ist­ing Cen­tral Block at the POS­GH. It is ex­pect­ed that the med­ical equip­ment will be ful­ly out­fit­ted by March next year.

Bo­doe said yes­ter­day, “There’s still a long way to go in terms of this fa­cil­i­ty be­ing ready to house pa­tients. Not on­ly the op­er­at­ing the­atres, it al­so is go­ing to pro­vide a car­diac cath lab. Heart dis­ease is a big is­sue in our coun­try, and of course, the cath lab will help in terms of al­le­vi­at­ing the work­load. There’s al­so in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gy, lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices, and so on. Of course, no mat­ter if you have beds and so on, with­out the prop­er med­ical equip­ment, di­ag­nos­tic and lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices, and so on, you will not be able to treat pa­tients.”

The sod was turned on this project on No­vem­ber 19, 2019, but the de­sign-build con­tract by SCG Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed was ter­mi­nat­ed two years lat­er. A top­ping-off cer­e­mo­ny was held on Oc­to­ber 23, 2023, while the for­mer gov­ern­ment held a prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion of the Cen­tral Block on March 10.

John has faced calls to open the Cen­tral Block. Yes­ter­day, she said the rea­son for the tour was to show the pub­lic how far it is from be­ing com­plet­ed. She ques­tioned the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion to prac­ti­cal­ly open the fa­cil­i­ty. John stat­ed, “When you ac­cept prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion, you trig­ger the war­ranties and guar­an­tees. So, in fact, you are with­in the de­fect li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od. You’re ac­cept­ing prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion with­out trig­ger­ing the de­fect li­a­bil­i­ty pe­ri­od? Is that Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion? No, be­cause once you ac­cept prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion, you trig­ger the war­ranties. You want to see when the rain falls, if the roof will leak. You’re look­ing to see when you put on the pipe, like I did just now, whether wa­ter will come out. So, you’re look­ing for the de­fects. The onus is on the con­trac­tor to rem­e­dy. This morn­ing, where we are is an ac­tive con­struc­tion site.”

In Ju­ly, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed $950 mil­lion had been spent on the Cen­tral Block thus far. John could not give how much that cost had risen to.

Mean­while, Bo­doe al­so pro­vid­ed an up­date on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the death of six-year-old Jash­er Fran­cois. He said, “That mat­ter is in the hands of a com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by my­self on the di­rec­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter. The work of the com­mit­tee is still on­go­ing, I be­lieve at­tor­neys have been en­gaged by the par­ents, which is their right to so do, but I’m still await­ing a fi­nal re­port on that mat­ter.” He could not give a time­frame as to when he ex­pect­ed to re­ceive the re­port.