Guy: No will to finish Cornwall Regional Hospital rehabilitation
Published:Saturday | January 16, 2021 | 7:09 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Opposition Spokesman on Health Dr Morais Guy is blasting the Government for what he has described as a lack of will to finish the ongoing restoration work at the St James-based Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH), which he estimates will now cost up to $12 billion to complete.
“We are estimating, based on what we have seen and what has been happening, that this is probably going to come out at the end of the day to about $10 to $12 billion to rehabilitate CRH,” said Guy, who toured the Mt Salem-based medical facility alongside other officials from the People’s National Party on Thursday. “If the Government was really serious about it, we think that they should have used the authority of the Cabinet to get emergency procurement to rehabilitate CRH, as it is not beyond us, but I think the will was not there to do it.”
“Since the rehabilitation of the CRH started, we have been told that over $4 billion has been spent [on the facility], and when one looks at the budget that was presented in Parliament for 2020-2021, there was an estimated $5 billion more for completion of the CRH by 2023. But since we last toured the facility in December 2019, when we saw the ninth and 10th floors being gutted, only two other floors have been gutted for the entire year,” added Guy.
Overseas Contractors
The opposition shadow minister also took fresh aim at Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton’s decision to bring in overseas contractors to finish the rehabilitation project, saying that such a move is an insult to Jamaica’s building industry.
“The other matter that is really mind boggling is the Government’s decision to go international now for tenders to invite contractors in [to work on the CRH]. It is an affront to the building industry in Jamaica, and to the many engineers and contractors who have built Jamaica, and we think that for the minister to have made that particular suggestion is really foolhardy,” said Guy.
Last December, the opposition criticised Tufton after he stated at a Gleaner Editors Forum that the government plans to seek international expertise to complete the CRH project, saying he should instead take responsibility for the repeated delays to the project’s completion.CRH, which is the only Type A hospital in western Jamaica, has been undergoing restoration to correct a noxious fumes issue, which first surfaced in late 2016. In 2017, the 10-floor facility’s departments had to be evacuated from its first three floors as a result of the fumes. A team from the Pan American Health Organisation subsequently identified fibreglass particles in the hospital’s ventilation system as the source of the fumes. The CRH’s restoration work was scheduled for completion last December, after missing the previous November 2019 deadline. However, last October, the Professor Archibald McDonald-led committee overseeing the restoration project announced that the work would likely be finished in late 2021 or early 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the work’s progression.