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Saturday, July 12, 2025

35 years of struggle for a new Arima Hospital

by

1855 days ago
20200613
From left, MP for Arima, Minister of Health Anthony Garcia, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Arima businessman Ballirman Maharaj at the opening of the new Arima General Hospital on Tuesday.

From left, MP for Arima, Minister of Health Anthony Garcia, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Arima businessman Ballirman Maharaj at the opening of the new Arima General Hospital on Tuesday.

The fight for bet­ter health care which I felt that the peo­ple of Ari­ma and en­vi­rons de­serve has been a strug­gle for the last 35 years, and I was de­ter­mined to do my part to help make this hap­pen through the group called The Friends of the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal So­ci­ety. Tues­day, the open­ing of the new Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, was a red-let­ter day.

I was born in Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal in 1942 and nurse “Ted” de­liv­ered me. Some of the oth­er nurs­es were Nurse Au­guste, Cezair and Ti­tus. In 1958, af­ter 5 pm while play­ing foot­ball, I got a cut on my face and went to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal. The nurse told me that it need­ed stitch­es and sent me to Dr Seenath next door since it could not be done at the hos­pi­tal. He told me to pay $2 but I had no mon­ey. He re­fused to stitch the cut.

Decades lat­er, in 1984, my fam­i­ly wit­nessed the trag­ic pass­ing of my fa­ther at the Ari­ma Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency de­part­ment at the age of 68. The at­tend­ing physi­cian Dr Pierre was ex­treme­ly per­turbed stat­ing that with prop­er med­ica­tion and equip­ment my fa­ther could have been saved. Deeply hurt by this loss, I yearned to do some­thing so that oth­ers would not have to go through such tor­ment.

Some­time in 1985, en­cour­aged by Dr Calvin In­als­ingh, I put to­geth­er a team called The Friends of Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal So­ci­ety and served as the chair­man, where I set out plan­ning ways to as­sist the in­sti­tu­tion which was so vi­tal to Ari­ma and its en­vi­rons. The team did a “walk through” in the hos­pi­tal and list­ed the burn­ing and cru­cial is­sues fac­ing the doc­tors and nurs­es. This way, we were able to analyse the prob­lems in or­der of pri­or­i­ty.

Sev­er­al projects were un­der­tak­en to raise funds through do­na­tions, raf­fles and bazaars. We raised enough funds to pur­chase items that were re­quired im­me­di­ate­ly. Up­on pre­sen­ta­tion, the reg­is­trar at the time, Ms Ro­mano, in­formed us that she could not ac­cept the items as she had no per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Health to do so. We even­tu­al­ly ap­proached the then min­is­ter of health, Dr Em­manuel Ho­sein, who took the mat­ter to Cab­i­net to ac­cept the pub­lic-spir­it­ed gifts of clean­ing prod­ucts, mops, buck­ets, bleach, toi­let pa­per, fridge, stove, mi­crowave, wash­ing ma­chine, sta­tionery and a reg­is­ter book.

The Friends con­tin­ued their self­less en­deav­ours to pro­mote health and well be­ing in this dis­trict. The con­tin­ued ef­forts at rais­ing funds fa­cil­i­tat­ed the re­fur­bish­ing of the nurs­es’ hos­tel which was con­vert­ed to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency de­part­ment in 1987. The late prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son to­geth­er with the present Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Ho­n­ourable An­tho­ny Gar­cia, who was al­so a mem­ber of The Friends of Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal So­ci­ety, at­tend­ed and spoke at the func­tion.

We lat­er raised funds to as­sist with the ex­ten­sion and re­fur­bish­ment of the dis­pen­sary. How­ev­er, de­spite these ren­o­va­tions and ad­di­tions, the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­alised that with the ex­pand­ing pop­u­la­tion there was the need for a more mod­ern gen­er­al hos­pi­tal. At the hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny of the new Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency fa­cil­i­ty in the 90s, I asked the Ho­n­ourable Colm Im­bert “When will we get a gen­er­al hos­pi­tal?” He promised that it would be built soon.

Dur­ing the tenure of the ho­n­ourable prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar (2010-2015), I took to protest­ing for a gen­er­al hos­pi­tal to be built in Ari­ma. Soon af­ter, the then fi­nance min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai an­nounced in Par­lia­ment that Ari­ma would get a new gen­er­al hos­pi­tal. Af­ter that an­nounce­ment, to en­sure that the Gov­ern­ment did not re­nege on this promise, the Friends silent­ly and peace­ful­ly protest­ed on the first day of every month, “no burn­ing of tyres.”

In 2015 the protest bore fruit. Mrs Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar called me to be a part of the sod-turn­ing event. For­tunes did not favour the UNC as they were de­feat­ed by the PNM in the gen­er­al elec­tion of De­cem­ber 2015. The Friends kept re­mind­ing the new gov­ern­ment that the mon­ey for the project was al­ready bud­get­ed through an agree­ment with the Re­pub­lic of Chi­na and could not be di­vert­ed else­where. 35 years of strug­gle has end­ed and his­to­ry was cre­at­ed on June 9, 2020, when the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley cut the rib­bon. The new gen­er­al hos­pi­tal in Ari­ma is now a re­al­i­ty.

On be­half of the Friends of Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal So­ci­ety, we would like to thank our cre­ator for grant­i­ng and bless­ing the peo­ple of Ari­ma and en­vi­rons with the new state-of-the-art Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

To the mem­bers of the Friends of Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, those who are alive and those who have passed on, I would like to say thank you for your self­less sup­port. To all the oth­er sup­port­ers The Li­ons, The Ro­tar­i­ans, The Ki­wa­nis, the banks, busi­ness­es and any oth­ers which I have not men­tioned, I say thank you. To the peo­ple of Ari­ma and en­vi­rons, just re­mem­ber this fa­cil­i­ty be­longs to you, make full use and take good care of it.

Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj

CEO, ADM Im­port & Ex­port Dis­trib­u­tors Ltd


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