?UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's con­fir­ma­tion that no hos­pi­tal is ear­marked for Cen­tral Trinidad "is an abu­sive and vi­cious de­nial of the rights of the peo­ple to ad­e­quate health fa­cil­i­ties."

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on Mon­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said that the coun­try would soon have new/up­grad­ed gen­er­al hos­pi­tals in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do and at Mount Hope. He al­so spoke of four oth­er hos­pi­tals in San­gre Grande, Ari­ma, Point Fortin and San Fer­nan­do. Warn­er, who is in Mi­a­mi, said that on Ju­ly 26, 2007, the then Min­is­ter of Health had said that a hos­pi­tal would be built be­tween Cou­va and Ch­agua­nas. "Less than three years af­ter, how­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter ig­nores the ad­vice of his line min­is­ter, vir­tu­al­ly as­sumes his port­fo­lio and presents a new pro­pos­al," he said. "This is clear­ly a re­flec­tion of the in­com­pe­tence of both mem­bers of the Cab­i­net. Why did the Prime Min­is­ter aban­don the vi­sion of his Health Min­is­ter?" "The Prime Min­is­ter's an­nounce­ment of the planned up­grade and new hos­pi­tals was ex­treme­ly one-sided and bore no re­sem­blance to an eq­ui­table al­lo­ca­tion; ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly or de­mo­graph­i­cal­ly. In fact, all the up­grades are in­tend­ed for PNM strong­hold con­stituen­cies.

"It is there­fore ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate that the Prime Min­is­ter has in­ject­ed po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age in­to the pro­vi­sion of ad­e­quate health­care. "It is re­gret­table that the Prime Min­is­ter has de­cid­ed to use the dis­pen­sa­tion of health­care to muster po­lit­i­cal strength in his con­stituen­cies to boost his dwin­dling po­lit­i­cal for­tunes." Warn­er said Man­ning's state­ment al­so came mere days af­ter a $300 mil­lion pledge for Laven­tille, and 48 hours af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter's boast of a snap elec­tion. He added that he ob­vi­ous in­fer­ence was that the Prime Min­is­ter was cam­paign­ing and was, with­out shame, us­ing health­care as a po­lit­i­cal tool. The Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent said that in 2007, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice had stat­ed that the pop­u­la­tion of Ch­agua­nas, Ca­roni, Cou­va and en­vi­rons was in ex­cess of 350,000, so that Cen­tral was home to close to a quar­ter of the coun­try's pop­u­la­tion. Ch­agua­nas, he said, had de­vel­oped in­to a ma­jor busi­ness and com­mer­cial hub, yet it was once again de­nied a state-of-the-art health fa­cil­i­ty.

"Sure­ly, there is an im­bal­ance here that bor­ders on po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion," he de­clared. Warn­er said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) calls on the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­close the fea­si­bil­i­ty study pre­pared by HDR ar­chi­tects sub­mit­ted in Sep­tem­ber of 2008, which ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, was the foun­da­tion of this health pro­pos­al. "The na­tion de­serves an­swers on what pre­cip­i­tat­ed this pro­pos­al which is a snub on a ma­jor sec­tor of our pop­u­la­tion," he said. "Whether the an­swers are forth­com­ing or not, the Prime Min­is­ter will ul­ti­mate­ly have to face the in­qui­si­tion of the pub­lic at the next elec­toral poll in 2012 or be­fore."