Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

This coun­try has se­cured crit­i­cal sup­port fol­low­ing high-lev­el meet­ings at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, in­clud­ing a grant, part of which will be used to fund ad­di­tion­al fire ten­ders for un­der-re­sourced sta­tions, as well as sep­a­rate aid to re­fur­bish the soon-to-open Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Unit­ed Na­tions Head­quar­ters in New York, fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s meet­ing with UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res, yes­ter­day, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers praised the Prime Min­is­ter for se­cur­ing a $94 mil­lion grant from Chi­na.

The grant, val­ued at RMB 100 mil­lion (ap­prox­i­mate­ly $94 mil­lion), falls un­der the Agree­ment on Eco­nom­ic and Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries and will sup­port joint­ly ap­proved projects in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It was dis­cussed dur­ing a Sep­tem­ber 18 meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Chi­nese Am­bas­sador Ren Hongyan at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

On Thurs­day in New York, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers held talks with Chi­na’s Vice Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Miao Deyu, fo­cus­ing on deep­en­ing both bi­lat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day asked the Prime Min­is­ter what the mon­ey would be used for.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar replied, “Al­most every fire sta­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go doesn’t have a fire ten­der, so if we could use this mon­ey to pro­cure fire ten­ders, they will be uni­form, if we use one brand, uni­form in terms of re­pairs, main­te­nance and what­ev­er. So that is one area. I’ve al­ready asked our Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to give me a list­ing of the sta­tions that need a fire ten­der.”

The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready iden­ti­fied one fire sta­tion that will be ben­e­fit­ing from this ini­tia­tive.

“One sta­tion I know that needs one, home first as they say, is the one in Pe­nal that I had done in my watch, which ten years lat­er still does not have a fire ten­der.”

There is a well-doc­u­ment­ed and crit­i­cal short­age of func­tion­al fire ten­ders (firetrucks) with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS). This short­age is a pri­ma­ry con­cern raised by the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion and is of­ten cit­ed in the me­dia as a fac­tor con­tribut­ing to de­layed re­sponse times and loss of life in emer­gen­cies.

Nu­mer­ous fire sta­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing those in strate­gic ar­eas like Wood­brook, Bel­mont, Mor­vant, San­ta Cruz, Pe­nal, and Ma­yaro, have been re­port­ed to be with­out a func­tion­al wa­ter or fire ten­der.

The PM not­ed that while the mon­ey from Chi­na is a grant and not a loan, “there’s no free lunch”. She added, “So a part of the agree­ment would be for us to use it for Chi­nese labour, sup­plies, goods and ser­vices.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing was signed with of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) to help “re­ha­bil­i­tate and bring back the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal”.

“They have of­fered to as­sist us in sev­er­al in­fra­struc­ture projects in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the PM added.

Asked to elab­o­rate on the UAE’s as­sis­tance, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “A lot of the pieces of equip­ment would have lost the guar­an­tees and war­ranties and what­ev­er, but we’ll get it done.”

Stress­ing the need for the fa­cil­i­ty to be ful­ly op­er­a­tional, which she hopes can be done by the end of 2025, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Such a ma­jor fa­cil­i­ty, which could have saved so many lives. In­deed, the lives of those ten ba­bies. The ba­bies who died up at Port-of-Spain. All of that could have done, but no cry­ing, let’s go.”

Lament­ing the state Gov­ern­ment found the fa­cil­i­ty in, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “Well, we want to work on that hos­pi­tal in two phas­es. Phase one for us to go and do the in­fra­struc­ture works, bring it back up to speed. Al­ready our min­is­ters have been on site vis­its, as­sess­ments have been done as to ex­act­ly what needs to be done with re­spect. You would have seen when they did the walk­through, you see equip­ment sit­ting there, the plas­tic is still on it for 10 years just sit­ting there.”

The hos­pi­tal was a ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture project ini­ti­at­ed by the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion of 2010-2015. It was built un­der a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with Chi­na.

Con­struc­tion be­gan around 2012 by the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (SCG) In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Lim­it­ed. The project was su­per­vised by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott).

The re­port­ed cost was around $1.6 bil­lion.

The 230-bed hos­pi­tal was of­fi­cial­ly com­mis­sioned on Au­gust 14, 2015, just be­fore the coun­try’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

The sub­se­quent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion faced crit­i­cism for the hos­pi­tal’s pro­longed clo­sure. The sub­se­quent PNM gov­ern­ment main­tained that the hos­pi­tal was in­com­plete and that the fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal arrange­ments, in­clud­ing staffing and an op­er­at­ing part­ner, need­ed to be fi­nalised.

Even­tu­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to des­ig­nate the fa­cil­i­ty as a teach­ing hos­pi­tal to be owned by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, run by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

The re­open­ing of the hos­pi­tal was a ma­jor cam­paign promise of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress pri­or to its vic­to­ry at the polls on April 28.