The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) says it is yet to re­ceive the $100 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in the 2012 bud­get ap­proved for To­ba­go's health sec­tor. The al­lo­ca­tion was ap­proved to fund the com­ple­tion of the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal which was sched­uled to be ful­ly com­mis­sioned in Sep­tem­ber.

A state­ment yes­ter­day from the THA said ef­forts by Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Dr Anselm Lon­don, and Sec­re­tary of Health and So­cial Ser­vices, Clau­dia Groome-Duke, to get the mon­ey re­leased by the Min­istry of Fi­nance have so far been fu­tile.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said, at the first phase of the com­mis­sion­ing of the in­sti­tu­tion at Sig­nal Hill on April 4, 2012, her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment would have pro­vid­ed all the re­sources nec­es­sary to have the hos­pi­tal ful­ly com­mis­sioned by Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, with just over two months to go to that date and the end of the 2012 fis­cal year, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the THA re­ceiv­ing the fund seems re­mote, the state­ment said. It added the Chief Sec­re­tary and Dr Lon­don have in­sist­ed that if the $100 mil­lion was not re­ceived with­in the fis­cal year, the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment would be in breach of the THA Act and the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion (DRC) rul­ing that the THA must re­ceive be­tween 4.03 per cent and 6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

The par­lia­men­tary al­lo­ca­tion for the THA in fis­cal 2012 was $3.1 bil­lion. The re­lease said Dr Lon­don re­cent­ly wrote new Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai draw­ing his at­ten­tion to the out­stand­ing $100 mil­lion to the THA. Howai told re­porters at the Co­co Reef Re­sort last week he had asked his per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to look in­to the mat­ter. Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan al­so told re­porters he was aware of the sit­u­a­tion and was lob­by­ing for the re­lease of the funds as soon as pos­si­ble so the hos­pi­tal could be ful­ly com­mis­sioned as planned.