Consultant rejects blame for report lag

The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) did not turn over hundreds of documents that were critical to an operation and turnaround plan it commissioned for millions of dollars, the Canadian consulting firm that was contracted to draft it has alleged.

This claim by Williams Pragmatic Services (WPS) comes amid scrutiny of its contract with the UHWI by Jamaican lawmakers.

Hodine Williams, chief executive officer (CEO) of WPS, dismissed questions raised publicly about the qualification and competence of the consultants.

Williams, who is Jamaican, revealed that from the start of the engagement, and continuing throughout, his firm requested a “comprehensive suite” of hundreds of documents across 40 different categories, which were essential to a proper operational review and a credible turnaround strategy.

He declined to divulge details of the documents that were requested, but said that the UHWI had contractually committed to providing them.

But according to him, only about 25 per cent of the documents were provided, despite UHWI appointing a dedicated employee to facilitate the process.

“This systemic and sustained deficiency in information flow significantly constrained the ability of WPS to execute its mandate in a complete and optimal manner,” Williams told The Sunday Gleaner on Friday.

“The impediments to timely completion were largely outside of WPS’s control and were consistently communicated to UHWI throughout the engagement.”

He said all of this information should have been available to members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament because the full list of documents that were not handed over is attached to the report WPS submitted to UHWI.

The contract between the UHWI and WPS, which was signed in September 2024, came to public attention earlier this year after it was flagged by the AuGD in a performance audit of the hospital.

WPS was paid US$90,000 at the time of the contract signing and was required to produce the operation and turnaround plan within four months, UHWI executives told the PAC last Tuesday.

But instead, WPS submitted a draft report in February this year, one month after the contract was flagged in the audit report by the AuGD, UHWI acting CEO Eric Hosin disclosed, drawing the ire of PAC Chairman Julian Robinson.

“That is crazy, that you could pay 50 per cent almost two years [ago] and only because the auditor general goes in that he produces that report after getting 50 per cent of his money. Madness that,” Robinson said.

The lawmaker noted that if there were mitigating circumstances that prevented WPS from delivering the turnaround plan within the stipulated time frame, “there would have to be something in writing to formally indicate that there was a problem”.

The WPS CEO acknowledged that his firm initially submitted a draft report, but explained that this was done because they were still anticipating receipt of the outstanding documents from the UHWI, especially since the contract had become the subject of an audit query by the AuGD.

A final 123-page report was submitted earlier this month with the necessary “qualifications, limitations and caveats to preserve analytical integrity”, Williams disclosed.

He said questions about the capacity and competence of WPS consultants are “entirely without merit”, pointing to their academic training and expertise in law, finance, economics, international business, management and corporate governance.

Williams said his company wrote several letters to the UHWI complaining about the information gap and requesting to be released from the contract at no additional cost to the hospital.

He said “in the interest of transparency and accountability” it was incumbent on the UHWI to provide the PAC with a comprehensive account of the issues.

“These communications were not casual or informal; they were documented, repeated, and aligned with the contractual framework governing the engagement,” he said.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com