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Sunday, June 29, 2025

Couva Children’s Hospital top priority for new Udecott board

by

16 days ago
20250613
Udecott chairman Shankar Bidaisee

Udecott chairman Shankar Bidaisee

Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The new­ly ap­point­ed Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) chair­man has iden­ti­fied the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal as a pri­or­i­ty project for the new board.

At­tor­ney-at-law Shankar Bidaisee said Ude­cott is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the hos­pi­tal to de­ter­mine the state of the equip­ment and “rec­on­cile against the ap­pro­pri­ate as­set reg­is­ter to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the equip­ment and num­ber of beds re­moved from the hos­pi­tal.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has pledged to ful­ly re­open the fa­cil­i­ty.

The Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal was of­fi­cial­ly com­mis­sioned on Au­gust 14, 2015, just be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Af­ter the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment lost that elec­tion, the in­com­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment did not im­me­di­ate­ly com­mis­sion the hos­pi­tal. This led to a pe­ri­od of con­tention and crit­i­cism re­gard­ing its in­com­plete sta­tus, lack of staffing, and ab­sence of es­sen­tial fa­cil­i­ties like a mor­tu­ary or in­cin­er­a­tor.

In 2018, the hos­pi­tal was re­named the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty and there were plans to make it a teach­ing hos­pi­tal run by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the fa­cil­i­ty was part of the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

Fig­ures vary re­gard­ing the over­all cost of the fa­cil­i­ty, but it is said to be in the $1.5 bil­lion re­gion.

Bidaisee said Ude­cott will al­so fo­cus on White­hall. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has yet to op­er­ate from her of­fice there. Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said the build­ing is un­fit for use.

Re­fur­bish­ment of the build­ing was spear­head­ed by the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion at a re­port­ed cost of $32 mil­lion. Re­cent­ly, Padarath said it would cost an ad­di­tion­al $4.5 mil­lion to im­prove White­hall.

Bidaisee said: “I am in­formed that sig­nif­i­cant work has been done to White­hall over the years and at sig­nif­i­cant cost. This board will first re­quire a thor­ough re­view of the build­ing to de­ter­mine its suit­abil­i­ty, the works done thus far by the con­trac­tor(s) and whether there was val­ue for mon­ey, what work needs to be done and the cost of do­ing same. This is on­go­ing and will be giv­en due pri­or­i­ty.”

Asked about the fu­ture of more than 100 on­go­ing projects on Ude­cott’s port­fo­lio, in­clud­ing the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re-De­vel­op­ment Mas­ter Plan, Elec­tions and Bound­aries Head Of­fice and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment As­sess­ment Cen­tre and Tem­po­rary Fa­cil­i­ty for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons, Bidassie said the Gov­ern­ment will de­cide on the way for­ward.

“Of course, the board’s pri­or­i­ty would be to as­sess all on­go­ing and planned projects against na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties and fea­si­bil­i­ty and ad­vise ac­cord­ing­ly,” he said.

“One key project is the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, which un­for­tu­nate­ly has not been ful­ly or at all op­er­a­tionalised for the past ten years.

“Ude­cott is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the hos­pi­tal to de­ter­mine the state of the equip­ment and rec­on­cile against the ap­pro­pri­ate as­set reg­is­ter to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of equip­ment and num­ber of beds re­moved from the hos­pi­tal.”

Bidaisee said the board will al­so re­view the 2025-2028 Strate­gic Plan of Ude­cott which was ap­proved by the pre­vi­ous board.

He ex­plained that this will be done to en­sure “op­ti­mum ef­fi­cien­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, ad­her­ence to lead­ing prac­tices in trans­paren­cy in­clud­ing pro­cure­ment, stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, val­ue for mon­ey and to en­sure that its na­tion­al phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment port­fo­lio trans­lates in­to over­all na­tion­al so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple of T&T.

“De­tailed re­ports are be­ing pre­pared by man­age­ment to in­form the Board of the sta­tus of the cor­po­ra­tion’s projects, fi­nance as it re­lates to, in­ter alia, Ude­cott’s in­vest­ments, debts, re­ceiv­ables, oth­er as­sets and com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works in­clud­ing any fines and penal­ties and out­stand­ing au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments. Up­on the com­ple­tion of an in-depth re­view of what has been hap­pen­ing be­tween 2015 to present Ude­cott will pro­vide a re­port for pub­lic re­view through the ap­pro­pri­ate chan­nels,” he said.

Asked what ex­per­tise he brings to the State en­ti­ty, Bidaisee said he’s no stranger to Ude­cott.

“I have been sit­ting on statu­to­ry bod­ies for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 years to present so I am very aware of the frame­work with­in which a board ought to func­tion. I sat on the board of Ude­cott for five years be­tween 2010-2015.”


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