Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the board of di­rec­tors of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), Dr Tim Gopeesingh, says an au­dit has been or­dered in­to the ex­pen­di­ture at the au­thor­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC).

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day, Gopeesingh said the need for the au­dit came af­ter un­cov­er­ing that the NCRHA owed $322 mil­lion. He said there were two bills flagged im­me­di­ate­ly: an an­nu­al $52 mil­lion se­cu­ri­ty con­tract and an an­nu­al $45 mil­lion clean­ing con­tract. Both con­tracts, he said, were award­ed with­out ten­ders and have been in ex­is­tence since 2007.

The au­dit is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed with­in a week and would al­so fo­cus on $4 mil­lion spent on a gar­den at the south­ern en­trance of the EWM­SC, which in­clud­ed $2 mil­lion in over­time wages and the rest on equip­ment from 2023.

“We have a lot of au­dit­ing to do on the ex­pen­di­ture and what went on in the RHA. All the lifts (at EWM­SC) are 37 years old. No­body took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­pair the lifts. And there are so many de­fects and de­fi­cien­cies in the sys­tem; it’s ap­palling. To un­der­stand that the board for 10 years sat down and did noth­ing about in­fra­struc­ture.”

Apart from the EWM­SC, the NCRHA over­sees the Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, Ari­ma Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, Arou­ca Health Cen­tre, Blan­chisseuse and Bras­so Seco Health Cen­tres, Ch­agua­nas Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, Cunu­pia Health Cen­tre, La Hor­quet­ta Health Cen­tre, Las Lo­mas Health Cen­tre, Barataria Health Cen­tre, St Joseph Ex­tend­ed Care Cen­tre, and the Tacarigua Health Cen­tre.

Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts were can­celled with­in the last few weeks, as well as clean­ing con­tracts. This re­port­ed­ly forced the tem­po­rary shut­down of the in­ten­sive care unit at the EWM­SC.

Sources said se­cu­ri­ty pa­trols were in­creased af­ter men dis­guised as doc­tors were caught on cam­era ear­li­er this month try­ing to scale a back wall to en­ter the hos­pi­tal.

Sun­day Guardian reached out to NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas about the cuts and was ad­vised to con­tact Gopeesingh, as he

• Con­tin­ues on page 9

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(Thomas) was on va­ca­tion un­til the end of the year.

Gopeesingh said the con­tracts were stopped be­cause of the al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

“The is­sue is that we spent $45 mil­lion on clean­ing. One con­trac­tor is get­ting $1.5 mil­lion a month, or what­ev­er it is. And then we still have at least 50 clean­ers with­in the in­sti­tu­tion that ought to be do­ing the clean­ing in cer­tain ar­eas.

The last se­cu­ri­ty con­tract was in 2007. And five com­pa­nies have been re­ceiv­ing fund­ing.”

He said ten­ders will be is­sued with­in the com­ing weeks.

Sources at the EWM­SC said that avoid­able elec­tri­cal prob­lems left the hos­pi­tal with­out pow­er on Fri­day.

When asked about this, Gopeesingh again placed the blame on the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing there were no reg­u­lar checks and up­keep.

“Imag­ine they sat down and did noth­ing about the trans­form­ers from the pow­er grid of the T&TEC. We had to just go in there and just deal with it. If there was one trans­former blown from the pow­er line in T&TEC, the whole area would have been shut down. So, we took the de­ci­sive step to in­form the pub­lic about the is­sues.”

He said 171 ar­eas on the EWM­SC com­plex were iden­ti­fied as lack­ing prop­er light­ing, which T&TEC is now ad­dress­ing. Gopeesingh said some pa­tients were trans­ferred to Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, in­clud­ing ICU pa­tients, as the elec­tri­cal is­sues are ad­dressed this week­end.

He said over $200 mil­lion was spent on pur­chas­ing con­sum­ables, yet there is a lack of gloves, nee­dles, and so on. The car­diac de­part­ment, he said, is al­so out of stents, and of the eight op­er­at­ing the­atres, three are func­tion­al. Gopeesingh said he has al­ready un­cov­ered sab­o­tage at the EWM­SC.

“Last week Sun­day, I had to be in the hos­pi­tal, on a Sun­day morn­ing when three lifts were sab­o­taged. They are al­ready stuff­ing tow­els down the toi­let bowls and so on to short-cir­cuit equip­ment. This is the abom­inable sit­u­a­tion we have in­her­it­ed. It’s atro­cious. It’s un­be­liev­able; it’s frus­trat­ing. It’s very frus­trat­ing.”

Sun­day Guardian called and mes­saged Thomas on the is­sues raised by Gopeesingh, but he did not re­spond up to late yes­ter­day.