The Chair­man and Board of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) have de­mand­ed a prompt apol­o­gy from Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les over al­le­ga­tions he made in the Low­er House on Fri­day.

In a re­lease, the NCRHA con­demned Gon­za­les, ac­cus­ing him of hid­ing be­hind par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to de­lib­er­ate­ly spread “a litany of bla­tant lies, false­hoods and mis­in­for­ma­tion” about the Au­thor­i­ty and its chair­man, Dr Tim Gopeesingh.

The board de­scribed Gon­za­les' con­tri­bu­tion as an act of “cow­ard­ly, overt char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion” and a sin­is­ter at­tack on the chair­man, di­rec­tors, ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment and staff, ac­cus­ing him of at­tempt­ing to res­cue his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

The re­lease said Gon­za­les served as a Cab­i­net min­is­ter from 2020 to 2025 while the PNM gov­ern­ment, be­tween 2016 and 2025, spent $13 bil­lion by the then-PNM-ap­point­ed NCRHA board.

It claimed eight sup­pli­ers re­ceived more than $250 mil­lion each, large­ly with­out con­tracts or ac­count­abil­i­ty. NCRHA said one jan­i­to­r­i­al com­pa­ny was al­leged­ly paid $124 mil­lion over two years with­out ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures or con­tracts.

The NCRHA said the new board in­her­it­ed more than $400 mil­lion in debt owed to 520 sup­pli­ers when it took of­fice in Au­gust 2025.

It de­scribed the Au­thor­i­ty's fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional con­di­tion as se­vere­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

Among the prob­lems the NCRHA al­leged­ly found, it said, were:

Hun­dreds of gang mem­bers al­leged­ly em­ployed un­der the pre­vi­ous board.

More than 360 ma­jor pieces of med­ical equip­ment that were non-func­tion­al.

Nine­teen non-func­tion­al lifts and eight non-op­er­a­tional the­atres.

More than 4,000 air-con­di­tion­ing units that had not been ser­viced for years.

An age­ing trans­former de­scribed as be­ing on the brink of caus­ing a black­out.

A $10 mil­lion chiller left to rust for nine years.

Three large stand­by gen­er­a­tors out of ser­vice.

Raw sewage al­leged­ly be­ing pumped in­to the main pub­lic wa­ter sys­tem.

More than 400 wash­rooms and toi­lets that were non-func­tion­al.

Wards, emer­gency de­part­ments and clin­ics in a state of dis­re­pair.

Hun­dreds of non-func­tion­al elec­tri­cal light­ing fix­tures through­out the com­plex.

The board ac­cused Gon­za­les and his for­mer Cab­i­net col­leagues of fail­ing to ad­dress the prob­lems dur­ing their time in of­fice.

“He, his Cab­i­net and the then Board of Di­rec­tors did ab­solute­ly noth­ing to as­sist and en­sure com­pe­ten­cy and func­tion­al­i­ty,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The NCRHA said Gon­za­les' com­ments de­served strong con­dem­na­tion, adding that the pub­lic was still en­ti­tled to an­swers from the for­mer min­is­ter about the li­a­bil­i­ties and pro­cure­ment fail­ures that ex­ist­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The re­lease al­so ad­dressed sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions made by Gon­za­les, in­clud­ing claims that the NCRHA em­ployed for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) of­fi­cers who had been found guilty and dis­missed.

The Au­thor­i­ty de­nied the claims, say­ing none of the for­mer em­ploy­ees men­tioned by Gon­za­les had ever been em­ployed by the NCRHA or was cur­rent­ly on its staff.

It al­so re­ject­ed claims that the for­mer pub­lic pro­cure­ment man­ag­er had been fired and re­placed, ex­plain­ing that the in­di­vid­ual had been tem­porar­i­ly ap­point­ed by the pre­vi­ous chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer be­fore the last gen­er­al elec­tion. A sub­se­quent re­view found that the in­cum­bent was not qual­i­fied or ex­pe­ri­enced for the po­si­tion, the re­lease said.

The NCRHA al­so re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing in­volv­ing the Au­thor­i­ty and its chair­man.

“The NCRHA will not apol­o­gise for in­sist­ing that pub­lic funds be prop­er­ly man­aged, that pro­cure­ment be con­duct­ed law­ful­ly, and that ad­min­is­tra­tive arrange­ments with­stand pub­lic and na­tion­al scruti­ny,” the re­lease stat­ed.