Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Gov­ern­ment has a team work­ing to get the new Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal "up and run­ning once and for all," but she has not pro­vid­ed a time­line for when the fa­cil­i­ty will be­come op­er­a­tional.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, while re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who asked when the new block would be com­mis­sioned.

Ad­dress­ing the sta­tus of the Cen­tral Block, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said since re­turn­ing to of­fice in 2025, her ad­min­is­tra­tion had been work­ing to com­plete out­stand­ing works while prepar­ing the fa­cil­i­ty for op­er­a­tion.

"At the same time, we're putting to­geth­er a plan to have the block up and run­ning. We're work­ing on the ad­di­tion­al staffing, out­fit­ting and pro­gramme de­vel­op­ment," she said.

She added that Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and UDe­COTT had ad­vised that the pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied works were ap­proach­ing their fi­nal stages. She said fur­ther de­tails would be pro­vid­ed once the work nears com­ple­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so crit­i­cised the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion over the state of the project.

She re­called that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment held a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the $1.3 bil­lion fa­cil­i­ty on No­vem­ber 19, 2019, and lat­er staged what she de­scribed as a "prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion cer­e­mo­ny" on March 10, 2025.

"At that time, the fa­cil­i­ty was still a ma­jor con­struc­tion site and very, very far from com­ple­tion," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the PNM of mov­ing med­ical equip­ment and fur­ni­ture be­tween fa­cil­i­ties to cre­ate the im­pres­sion the Cen­tral Block was ready for ser­vice.

"They moved equip­ment, fur­ni­ture and so on from one fa­cil­i­ty to an­oth­er so they could out­fit one floor at that Cen­tral Block to give the im­pres­sion the fa­cil­i­ty was com­plet­ed and about to be op­er­a­tionalised. It was a con job on the peo­ple," she claimed.

She sug­gest­ed that some peo­ple might view those ac­tions as tan­ta­mount to fraud, al­though she stopped short of di­rect­ly mak­ing that ac­cu­sa­tion.

Young, in a sup­ple­men­tary ques­tion di­rect­ed to Bo­doe, not­ed that the min­is­ter pre­vi­ous­ly told Par­lia­ment the Cen­tral Block was ex­pect­ed to open in Ju­ly this year.

"So why is the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter now say­ing she doesn't know when it would be open?" Young asked.

Bo­doe: No de­com­pos­ing bod­ies at PoS­GH mor­tu­ary

Mean­while, Young raised con­cerns about re­ports that bod­ies were de­com­pos­ing at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary be­cause of prob­lems with its walk-in re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem. He asked what steps were be­ing tak­en to ad­dress the is­sue.

In re­sponse, Bo­doe said, "I wish to as­sure this House and the mem­ber that there are no de­com­pos­ing bod­ies in the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary."

Bo­doe said he was ad­vised that the mor­tu­ary's re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem re­mained op­er­a­tional and the back­up gen­er­a­tor was func­tion­ing prop­er­ly.

"The pri­ma­ry com­pres­sor is cur­rent­ly non-func­tion­al; how­ev­er, the sec­ondary com­pres­sor is op­er­a­tional and is present­ly main­tain­ing the fridge at the prop­er tem­per­a­ture. There­fore, the mor­tu­ary fridge is cur­rent­ly func­tion­al," he said.

Bo­doe said the stand­by com­pres­sor con­tin­ues to be mon­i­tored while arrange­ments are made to re­place the pri­ma­ry unit.