Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is prob­ing the long over­due Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal the con­struc­tion cost of which has jumped from al­most $136 mil­lion in 2002 to $719 mil­lion cur­rent­ly–re­sult­ing in a of $584.1 mil­lion cost over­run.

And the new com­ple­tion date for the hos­pi­tal is now March 2011, nine years af­ter work start­ed. Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis and To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin gave the in­for­ma­tion in a up­date on the hos­pi­tal's strand­ed sta­tus, dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved some $30 mil­lion to fin­ish the hos­pi­tal. Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, has man­dat­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to launch a foren­sic au­dit of the project and al­so asked the Fi­nance Min­istry's cen­tral au­dit unit to im­me­di­ate­ly ex­am­ine the project's fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments up to 2010 in­clu­sive of the ad­di­tion­al $30 mil­lion.

Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said ini­tial con­struc­tion of the project start­ed with NH Caribbean in June 2002 at a cost of $136 mil­lion. In March 2005, some 35 per cent was com­plete and NHIC was paid $155 mil­lion, she said. The is­sue, how­ev­er, lat­er en­tered ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings which cost the state $18 mil­lion in le­gal fees, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said. She said Nipdec then award­ed a con­tract to Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Co (CR­CC) for $477 mil­lion to fin­ish the project. An­oth­er con­tract worth $16.8 mil­lion was award­ed by Nipdec to Geni­var in De­cem­ber 2009 for de­sign con­struc­tion and su­per­vi­sion of ser­vice. CR­CC's scope of works in­clud­ed two ad­di­tion­al build­ings, air-con­di­tion­ing and re­me­di­al works. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said that to date, CR­CC was paid $252 mil­lion for com­ple­tion of 72 per cent of the work and sup­ply­ing equip­ment. Project man­age­ment fees to Nid­pdec was $11mil­lion. Based on all of the above, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said over­all ex­pen­di­ture for the hos­pi­tal was $449 mil­lion cur­rent­ly.

She said the orig­i­nal com­ple­tion date was April 2010. How­ev­er, on­ly 72 per cent of the work was done. CR­CC re­ceived an ex­ten­sion to Sep­tem­ber 2010 to have the ad­di­tion­al work done. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said that in 2010, the min­istry al­lo­cat­ed $130 mil­lion for the project, of which $128 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed. This left a short­fall which ne­ces­si­tat­ed the move­ment of mon­ey from one min­istry fund to an­oth­er to fin­ish the project. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said, how­ev­er, that Nipdec had in­di­cat­ed that an ad­di­tion­al $240 mil­lion would be need­ed to com­plete the hos­pi­tal. Al­leyne-Top­pin who said there were out­stand­ing in­voic­es on the hos­pi­tal, added that Cab­i­net had agreed to fund the $240 mil­lion to com­plete the project and for the in­ter­est of the peo­ple. She said the hos­pi­tal start­ed in 2002 and had not been de­liv­ered to date. "And it has cost the State so much mon­ey...from $130 mil­lion orig­i­nal­ly to end up at an es­ti­mat­ed $719 mil­lion–we have a cost over­run for the Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal of $584.4 mil­lion," the min­is­ter said.

"The Cab­i­net has agreed that the project will not be halt­ed due to the au­dit. The build­ing will be con­tin­ued so that health­care can be con­tin­ued." Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said the min­istry would do an au­dit of the fi­nan­cial plan­ning, li­ais­ing with the project man­age­ment team to get an as­sur­ance on the "mov­ing dead­line" for the project. Al­leyne-Top­pin said pro­ject­ed com­ple­tion date is now March 2011. "We hope to meet that dead­line," she added. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said she could not say which con­trac­tor took the bud­get in­to cost over­runs. She said the CR­CC group has stuck to their bud­get. How­ev­er, it was an ad­di­tion of the "two" which con­tributed to cost over­runs, she added. She said the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty al­so gave an es­ti­mate of $61.5 mil­lion for un­fixed equip­ment. How­ev­er, the min­istry's team came up with an­oth­er es­ti­mate of $38.8 mil­lion–$10 mil­lion of this com­ing from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said all of these "chang­ing fig­ures" were dri­ving up the project's cost. Al­leyne-Top­pin said Geni­var had al­so in­di­cat­ed that it had spend a lot of funds to re­place a lot of pipes and oth­er fix­tures.