The sec­ond of two field hos­pi­tals do­nat­ed to T&T by the US Gov­ern­ment has been erect­ed at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain.

Mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force be­gan con­struct­ing the tent hos­pi­tal ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing. It will be able to ac­com­mo­date 40 beds. The first was es­tab­lished out­side the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal on Wednes­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Wednes­day night that the two field hos­pi­tals were the re­sult of an agree­ment the gov­ern­ment made with the US Gov­ern­ment dat­ing back to Sep­tem­ber 2020.

They ar­rived in T&T last month.

He, how­ev­er, crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for seek­ing to at­tribute its do­na­tion to their out­reach.

“The re­al prob­lem with the UNC say­ing the field hos­pi­tals are a re­sult of their in­ter­ven­tion is that they ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect to get peo­ple to be­lieve that it could be done in two days. This is the rea­son why they re­sort to the naked lie in the hope of get­ting po­lit­i­cal cred­it. They are not on­ly bar­ren of ideas but they will ‘tief’ some cred­it if they think the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es,” Row­ley post­ed on his Face­book page late Wednes­day night.

He added: “The Op­po­si­tion Leader was pass­ing out­side Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and saw the field hos­pi­tal go­ing up. This af­ter we spoke about ex­pand­ing bed space for pa­tients who re­quire a low­er lev­el of pa­tient care as Dr Paras­ram men­tioned last week. She dis­cov­ered what it was and that it came from the US.”

He claimed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar “then went on her plat­form and, as she did with her in­fa­mous let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di, made a call to Gov­ern­ment to ask the US for a field hos­pi­tal (af­ter she saw it in Cou­va) then framed a press re­lease to give her­self cred­it for bring­ing it about.

“How shame­less and dis­re­spect­ful of the in­tel­li­gence of cit­i­zens in this coun­try. It is be­ing asked, is there any­thing they wouldn’t steal?”

The hos­pi­tals come at a time when COVID-19 cas­es have spiked, with 87 deaths in the last 13 days.

The in­crease in cas­es has put added pres­sure on the nor­mal health sys­tem, re­sult­ing in a need to ex­pand the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.