Raphael John-Lall

Gov­ern­ment could have spent more mon­ey on equip­ment to treat can­cer had it not been for past cor­rup­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley saidon Sat­urday.

In the keynote ad­dress at the launch of the Lin­ear Ac­cel­er­a­tor (LINAC) Wing at the St James Med­ical Com­plex, Row­ley gave the ex­am­ple of a de­part­ment in the Min­istry of Hous­ing that had in the past that pur­chased prop­er­ty at an over­val­ued price of $175 mil­lion when it was orig­i­nal­ly val­ued at $52 mil­lion.

“That was $125 mil­lion more than tax­pay­ers should have spent. If that $125 mil­lion had not leaked out of the Trea­sury in that way, we could have got­ten an­oth­er ma­chine like this. This ma­chine cost $84 mil­lion.

He said his ad­min­is­tra­tion has been try­ing to main­tain so­cial ser­vices al­though rev­enue has been de­clin­ing over the last few years due to short­falls in oil and gas.

To get around this, the Gov­ern­ment has to en­sure there is a more ef­fi­cient sys­tem of tax col­lec­tion as a lot of the coun­try’s tax­es are not col­lect­ed.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the tax­es that ought to be col­lect­ed un­der the cur­rent arrange­ment is be­ing evad­ed,” Dr Row­ley said.

He said Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pri­ori­tise first-class health care, as re­cent­ly the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal was opened and in a few days, the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal will be opened. In ad­di­tion, hos­pi­tals are un­der con­struc­tion in San­gre Grande and Rox­bor­ough.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh an­nounced that the Cen­tre of Ra­dio­ther­a­py has been re­named the Can­cer Cen­tre of T&T and the equip­ment launched yes­ter­day will rev­o­lu­tionise can­cer treat­ment in this coun­try.

“The vi­sion for can­cer ser­vices in Trinidad and To­ba­go is for avail­able and ac­ces­si­ble first world can­cer treat­ment for all cit­i­zens af­flict­ed with can­cer.

“This vi­sion trans­lates to the pre­ven­tion of dis­ease, ear­ly de­tec­tion through screen­ing and ef­fec­tive di­ag­nose, be it surgery, chemother­a­py ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py and that is why we are re­nam­ing this cen­tre, the Can­cer Cen­tre. It is not on­ly about ra­di­a­tion,” he said.

Can­cer is the third lead­ing cause of death in T&T.