The Minister of Health, Dr. Lackram Bodoe, has criticised the prolonged underuse of the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility, calling it “a tragedy.”
The Minister spoke to TTT News after conducting a thorough walkthrough on Thursday. The tour, led by the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT), included Minister of Works and Infrastructure Jearlean John and Minister in the Ministry of Health Dr. Rishad Seecheran.
Commissioned in August 2015, the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility, championed by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, was intended to bring paediatric and adult inpatient services, emergency care, surgical services, laboratory, diagnostic imaging and training capacity together to improve access and emergency response times in Central and South Trinidad.
Minister Bodoe expressed his extreme disappointment in what was revealed during the walkthrough.
“People of Trinidad and Tobago have an opportunity to see what you all saw on the tour this morning. They would be very, very disappointed. I think what we’ve seen here is a tragedy of the greatest proportion. We have seen equipment, state-of-the-art equipment. We’ve seen beds here with still the plastic on. So we have seen here a 230-bed hospital that has not been utilised for the past 10 years, save for during the time of COVID. It really is a tragedy that this has happened, has been allowed to happen over the last ten years.”
Minister of Works and Infrastructure Jearlean John also expressed disappointment that millions of taxpayers’ dollars had “gone down the drain.”
“On that 14th day of August 2015 we had connected all of the binders with the warranty and the guarantees. We had accepted the hospital as having achieved completion for practical completion from the contractor so what we had done was to trigger the defect liability period of a year, it would have been two years, and the warranties would have been triggered so that is why today the biomedical engineers will be telling me this piece of equipment has one more year to go, six months next month. It’s gone after spending $10 million and the people of Trinidad and Tobago would have paid for it but they’ve had no use of it.”
The Health Minister gave his commitment to rectifying the situation: “Under the guidance and direction of the Honourable Prime Minister, the Ministry of Health is going to move together with UDeCOTT in the shortest possible time to fully operationalise this hospital. That is my intention as a Minister of Health.”
A comprehensive scope of works conducted by UDeCOTT noted that urgent remedial works to the building systems and medical equipment are necessary to meet required standards.
No set timeline has been given for the full reopening of the facility.