Al­ready de­layed at least twice, the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Cen­tral Block re­build­ing project dead­line has now been broad­ened past its most re­cent tar­get.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Health’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said this was out of their hands.

“The com­ple­tion time­frame for the new 540-bed cen­tral...tow­er is some time in 2024. We can’t give you and pin­point an ex­act month at this point in time be­cause as you know, glob­al sup­ply chains have been dis­rupt­ed and it’s just im­pos­si­ble to pin­point a month, or a quar­ter to say a first quar­ter, (or) sec­ond quar­ter,” he said.

In April, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia said it was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in March 2024. It was ini­tial­ly bud­get­ed at $1.1 bil­lion when works start­ed in 2018, with com­ple­tion ex­pect­ed by the end of 2022.

Work on the project re­cent­ly re­sumed when Ude­cott re­tained a lo­cal com­pa­ny, Uni­ver­sal Struc­tures, to com­plete the steel por­tion of the build­ing. Ear­li­er this year, prin­ci­pal con­trac­tors for the project since 2019, Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (SCG), sev­ered ties with Ude­cott.

De­spite these set­backs, work has now reached a sig­nif­i­cant junc­ture, as heavy de­mo­li­tion work is ex­pect­ed to be­gin next week and con­tin­ue for 12 weeks.

Act­ing North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) CEO, Ma­jor An­tho­ny Blake, light work was done to strip the build­ing and now work­ers will set their fo­cus on de­mol­ish­ing the ma­jor struc­ture. This scope of work is be­ing un­der­tak­en by Kall­co Lim­it­ed.

De­mo­li­tion work is ex­pect­ed to cost tax­pay­ers $3.5 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to Blake, the au­thor­i­ty in­sti­tut­ed mea­sures to mit­i­gate the de­mo­li­tion’s dis­rup­tion to pa­tients and their ser­vices, pri­mar­i­ly to deal with the dust and noise it will cre­ate. For dust, he said screens will be placed around build­ings and the site will be fre­quent­ly wa­tered to keep par­ti­cles down. For noise, he said crit­i­cal wards such as In­ten­sive Care Units will un­der­go noise at­ten­u­a­tion and work will on­ly com­mence af­ter 1 pm dai­ly.

Med­ical Di­rec­tor Dr Sha­hee­ba Bar­row said clin­ic hours have al­so been ad­just­ed, now be­gin­ning at 6 am and 9 am, to en­sure that pa­tients can leave be­fore the works be­gin.

“Our Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency ser­vice will con­tin­ue as is. Sim­i­lar­ly, the ob­stet­rics and gy­nae de­part­ment, so those pa­tients who need to ac­cess those ser­vices, that is to­tal­ly un­in­volved in this cur­rent lev­el­ling ex­er­cise. Sim­i­lar­ly, the au­top­sy and mor­tu­ary ser­vices,” she said.

Head of Surgery, Dr Dex­ter Thomas, said the hos­pi­tal’s main op­er­at­ing the­atre would be af­fect­ed by the work be­cause of its prox­im­i­ty to the old block. While there are oth­ers that can be used, he said there is a pro­to­col to fa­cil­i­tate the main the­atre’s use in an emer­gency.

“We’ve made con­tin­gency plans where, if in the event we have a ma­jor surgery that’s re­quired im­me­di­ate­ly, we will be able to ask the con­trac­tors to stop work for the du­ra­tion of the surgery and it will al­low that surgery to be done at the main op­er­at­ing the­atre,” he said.