RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions from Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts that the Cen­tral Block at the Port-of-Spain Hos­pi­tal is on­ly 85 per cent com­plete.

Roberts was speak­ing at the UNC Mon­day Night Fo­rum, hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley opened the Cen­tral Block, which will ac­com­mo­date 540 beds start­ing in Ju­ly. But Roberts claimed the Cen­tral Block was far from com­plete.

“To­day, they spent $778,000 to open two floors of a 13-storey build­ing. They spent al­most three-quar­ters of a mil­lion to open 15.38 per cent of a build­ing. It is not fin­ished. They put on their suits and say, ‘We’re near­ly done; on­ly 85 per cent more to go,’” Roberts said.

Com­ment­ing on Roberts’ claims, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said, “Yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ny was to cel­e­brate the prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion of the con­struc­tion of the Cen­tral Block. Pa­tient in­take will start in Ju­ly 2025, with a phased ap­proach for cer­tain ser­vices, adding more ser­vices over time. That is how we nor­mal­ly com­mis­sion hos­pi­tals. So far, we have spent $1.3 bil­lion on con­struc­tion, which is com­plet­ed.”

He re­it­er­at­ed, “Con­struc­tion is com­plete, and what we have to do now is in­stall equip­ment, which is be­ing done as we speak. Equip­ment has al­ready start­ed to come in, and that is why we will be­gin tak­ing pa­tients in Ju­ly 2025. In ad­di­tion, we will be ex­pand­ing the ex­ist­ing A&E to make it more mod­ern and big­ger, and that will be built in the 2026 fis­cal year bud­get.”

When asked why Roberts was mak­ing the as­ser­tion that the Cen­tral Block was in­com­plete, Deyals­ingh re­spond­ed, “You will have to ask him (Roberts). Deyals­ingh could not say whether Roberts’ state­ment was a de­lib­er­ate mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion but in­sist­ed that the con­struc­tion of the Cen­tral Block was com­plete. Mean­while, Deyals­ingh al­so chal­lenged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to pro­vide ev­i­dence for her claim that equip­ment had gone miss­ing from the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who spoke at the Mon­day Night Fo­rum, claimed, “We left the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal that the PNM nev­er opened, and they re­moved all the equip­ment.”

She said that when the equip­ment was moved, all the war­ranties were void­ed, and cal­i­bra­tions went askew. She vowed that the UNC would open a ful­ly func­tion­ing Cen­tral Block and the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal when it takes of­fice.

Mean­while, in a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Prime Min­is­ter had opened “an in­com­plete, over-bud­get, over­time con­struc­tion site.”

She said, “The hos­pi­tal block is in­com­plete, lacks most equip­ment and can­not ac­cept pa­tients. It’s the lat­est em­bar­rass­ment from a man who has no achieve­ments in ten years as Prime Min­is­ter.”

She added, “We have hun­dreds of lo­cal doc­tors, nurs­es, med­ical tech­ni­cians who are un­em­ployed and hun­dreds on short-term con­tracts. We should be putting our peo­ple first. Our first pri­or­i­ty should be cre­at­ing jobs for lo­cal med­ical per­son­nel be­cause we spend bil­lions in sub­ven­tions, GATE and schol­ar­ships to ed­u­cate them.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the Prime Min­is­ter and the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­COTT) to give the me­dia a full tour of the en­tire hos­pi­tal block, in­clu­sive of every sin­gle floor.