Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day ex­pressed hor­ror and out­rage at the time and cost over­runs at the still in­com­plete Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal. "This is a scan­dal," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said dur­ing a tour of the struc­ture, which has been un­der con­struc­tion since 2002 and was orig­i­nal­ly bud­get­ed to cost $136 mil­lion. The Prime Min­is­ter added: "I am hor­ri­fied and out­raged at how much this fa­cil­i­ty is cost­ing tax­pay­ers and the time it is tak­ing to have the project com­plet­ed." Per­sad-Bisses­sar toured the un­fin­ished 100-bed hos­pi­tal dur­ing the lunch break of the in­tense four-day gov­ern­ment work­shop, be­ing held at Co­co Reef Ho­tel in To­ba­go.

The cost could rise to as high as $760 mil­lion, Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis re­vealed. She added that the March 2011 planned com­ple­tion date may al­so be pushed back by sev­er­al months.

"This could cost tax­pay­ers more than $7 mil­lion a bed," she stressed.

The min­is­ter said this would be the re­sult of mat­ters stem­ming from the in­cep­tion of the project. The cur­rent con­trac­tor is Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny (CR­CC). The cost over­run would be more than $600 mil­lion, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis not­ed. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed: "This is un­ac­cept­able.

"Tax­pay­ers should not have to car­ry such a bur­den." She re­mind­ed jour­nal­ists that her gov­ern­ment has man­dat­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to launch a foren­sic au­dit in­to the project and the Min­istry of Fi­nance's Cen­tral Au­dit Unit to ex­am­ine fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments. Min­is­ter Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said that an ad­di­tion­al $50 mil­lion have been paid to con­trac­tors in the cur­rent fis­cal year which had not been bud­get­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. There is cur­rent­ly a $28 mil­lion in­voice that came in­to her min­istry a few days ago, she said.

She said that NIPDEC has queried cer­tain mat­ters per­tain­ing to the de­ploy­ment of equip­ment. The Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal has been fraught with scan­dal and con­fu­sion over the years, with claims of cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and oth­er fi­nan­cial wrong­do­ing. There has been a change of con­trac­tors, one of which led to ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings, which cost tax­pay­ers some $18 mil­lion in le­gal fees.