Dawes labels CRH restoration spend as ‘specious’

WESTERN BUREAU:

Opposition Spokesman on Health Dr Alfred Dawes has accused Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton of wasting money on the ongoing restoration of the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in St James, along with engaging in what he describes as a public relations campaign with Jamaica’s health sector.

“The explanation for the overspend at CRH is specious at best. No other hospital has seen anything close to $3 billion in improvements, making the claim about where these funds have been spent entirely ridiculous,” Dawes asserted in a media release on Sunday.

During a press conference last Thursday following his latest visit to the CRH site in Montego Bay, Tufton stoutly dismissed suggestions that corruption has been at the heart of the repeatedly increasing cost of the Type A hospital’s restoration work, which currently stands at $21.4 billion. That figure is more than 10 times the original $2-billion spend which was estimated in March 2018.

“The money hasn’t been spent yet. We have spent $3.5 billion on the project, and we’re estimating just over $5 billion this year based on all I have outlined here…when you put $21 billion and corruption in the same sentence, it doesn’t equate,” Tufton said at the time, while noting that some $3 billion is to be spent for more than 500 pieces of new equipment to be placed inside the building upon its completion.

‘Massive wastage’

But in Sunday’s media release, Dawes declared that the Ministry of Health & Wellness (MOHW) has only done cosmetic work on the CRH without giving value for money to the citizens who should benefit from the hospital’s presence.

“What has happened is that there was a massive wastage that hovers between spectacular incompetence and possible corruption, which is why we have failed to see any value for money except paint jobs and other cosmetic work. The people are still suffering despite us being told how much money has been spent, as if that is a metric by which success is measured,” said Dawes.

“It is time for Jamaicans to get a government that prioritises genuine actions rather than squandering taxpayer dollars on marketing ploys aimed at drowning out the harsh and painful realities facing ordinary citizens. The sheer magnitude of this ongoing media blitz by the MOHW speaks volumes about where this administration truly stands,” Dawes added.

Questions and concerns have arisen on several occasions regarding the CRH restoration project’s budget, for which the latest price tag was revealed in budget documents released by the Government in February this year, up from its last estimate of $14.6 billion.

Last September, the Opposition People’s National Party called for Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis to conduct a special audit of the CRH’s rehabilitation project back when its budget was at the $14-billion mark.

Notably, the restoration work’s project manager, Vivian Gordon, had acknowledged in February that there was no way to be certain whether the current $21.4-billion cost will remain as it currently stands or increase further before completion by April 2026.

There are also questions as to what is to be done with the equipment that was removed from the CRH for its restoration, and which was held in storage thereafter.

The CRH, which is the only Type A hospital in western Jamaica, has been undergoing its lengthy rehabilitation process since February 2017 when noxious fumes from the hospital’s ventilation system forced the evacuation of services from the facility’s first three floors.

That incident followed a similar complaint of noxious fumes five months earlier in September 2016, which had previously resulted in the CRH’s accident and emergency ward being evacuated.

Concerns about the air quality at the 10-floor facility, which was first built in 1974, had previously arisen as far back as 2009.

In the meantime, Sunday’s media release also pointed to the Clarendon-based Chapelton Community Hospital where a reported shortage of nurses has delayed plans to operate that hospital as a 24-hour facility, and the J$400 million in contracts which were absent from the MOHW’s COVID-19 expenditures according to an audit tabled in Parliament in 2022, as other issues where the ministry needs to provide answers.

“Despite the hype around its refurbishment, there is no comment on why Chapelton Hospital remains unusable due to predictable staff shortages…there has been no word on the $400 million improperly unaccounted for during the pandemic, nor a comment on the fact that the MOHW has been fingered as one entity unable to properly account for $1.3 trillion,” the release stated.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com