The new bil­lion-dol­lar, state-of-the-art Cen­tral Block at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal was in­tend­ed to pro­vide more func­tion­al, safe, and ef­fi­cient health­care de­liv­ery to the pop­u­la­tion.

Yet, al­most three months af­ter then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley un­veiled a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque mark­ing its “prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion,” the $1.3 bil­lion fa­cil­i­ty re­mains un­opened as out­fit­ting con­tin­ues.

This prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion cer­e­mo­ny sug­gest­ed the hos­pi­tal was ready. A video cir­cu­lat­ing in March showed un­fin­ished in­te­ri­ors and ex­posed walls, con­tra­dict­ing the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s fan­fare and rais­ing pub­lic con­cern over the fa­cil­i­ty’s readi­ness.

The Cen­tral Block—man­aged by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty—was sup­posed to open in Ju­ly 2025, ac­cord­ing to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), which ex­e­cut­ed the project.

The 540-bed hos­pi­tal is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er ser­vices in on­col­o­gy/chemother­a­py, pae­di­atric and adult in­ten­sive care, coro­nary care, urol­o­gy, out­pa­tient ser­vices, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, surgery, oph­thal­mol­o­gy, and high-de­pen­den­cy care.

Last week, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe said that he would “con­duct an on-site as­sess­ment” in the com­ing weeks, sim­i­lar to oth­er vis­its since as­sum­ing of­fice, in con­junc­tion with Ude­cott of­fi­cials.

“The min­istry will keep the pub­lic in­formed and will pro­vide time­ly up­dates as we progress to­wards the com­mis­sion­ing of this im­por­tant health­care fa­cil­i­ty,” Bo­doe as­sured.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John, Ude­cott’s line min­is­ter, al­so could not con­firm if the hos­pi­tal would wel­come pa­tients with­in four weeks.

“It has to be out­fit­ted first. I have not seen it my­self yet. But it is what we call a base build­ing.” A base build­ing refers to a shell.

John said she re­cent­ly met Ude­cott’s man­age­ment team and was await­ing the in­stal­la­tion of its board, ex­pect­ed soon.

“Once the board is there, I sup­pose we will get a bet­ter sense of all their projects. We will make an as­sess­ment of where every­thing is.” Cab­i­net would then be pro­vid­ed with an up­date, she said.

Ap­proved by Cab­i­net in 2017, the project was first award­ed in 2019 to Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (SCG) for $1.1 bil­lion. By late 2021, SCG ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract, cit­ing pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed cost surges. This col­lapse cost the State an ex­tra $110 mil­lion and de­layed the project by two years.

Ude­cott re-ten­dered the project, award­ing 13 con­tracts to­talling $1.1 bil­lion to five com­pa­nies. All of these con­tracts are in­clud­ed in the over­all cost of $1.3 bil­lion, Ude­cott stat­ed.

The con­tracts were award­ed to: Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd (CR­C­CL), AA Laquis (Trinidad) Ltd, Eye See You Oph­thalmic and Med­ical Sup­plies Ltd, West­ern Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny Ltd, and Uni­ver­sal Struc­tures Ltd.

• Of these, CR­C­CL re­ceived four con­tracts to­talling $837.7 mil­lion—over 75 per cent of the to­tal. The largest was a $615.3 mil­lion for mod­i­fied de­sign-build ser­vices. The oth­er three were for the sup­ply and istal­la­tion of In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) equip­ment ($79.7 mil­lion), re­fur­bish­ment of the med­ical li­brary ($13.2 mil­lion), and med­ical equip­ment ($129.3 mil­lion).

• Uni­ver­sal Struc­tures Ltd was award­ed $106.4 mil­lion for struc­tur­al steel and con­crete works, lat­er re­duced to $92.4 mil­lion af­ter sav­ings of $13.9 mil­lion.

• West­ern Sci­en­tif­ic re­ceived three con­tracts to­talling $99.5 mil­lion to sup­ply, in­stal­la­tion, com­mis­sion­ing and train­ing of med­ical equip­ment for in­pa­tient ma­jor ($53.6 mil­lion), lab­o­ra­to­ry ($41.6 mil­lion), and phar­ma­cy ($4.2 mil­lion).

• AA Laquis se­cured four con­tracts to­talling $63.6 mil­lion, with the largest ($35 mil­lion) for gen­er­al surgery. Oth­er awards were $13.2 mil­lion for en­doscopy, $13 mil­lion for head­wall ac­ces­sories and mis­cel­la­neous items, and $2.2 mil­lion for or­thopaedics.

• Eye See You Oph­thalmic and Med­ical Sup­plies ob­tained the small­est con­tract: $6.6 mil­lion for eye surgery equip­ment.

In to­tal, close to $300 mil­lion was spent on med­ical equip­ment. Items al­ready pro­cured in­clude MRI, CT scan, x-ray, ul­tra­sound, and mam­mog­ra­phy ma­chines. UDe­COTT’s list al­so in­cludes cath labs, ten op­er­at­ing the­atres, in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gy, lab­o­ra­to­ry equip­ment, ICU beds, ven­ti­la­tors, pen­dants, mon­i­tors, sy­ringe pumps, and de­fib­ril­la­tors.

As of March 28, 2025, ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture stood at $949.4 mil­lion. The cost of staff train­ing is in­clud­ed in the con­tracts, Ude­cott con­firmed.

Teelucks­ingh calls
for ac­count­abil­i­ty

Con­sul­tant in in­ter­nal med­i­cine, en­docrinol­o­gy, and di­a­betes, Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh, said while ma­jor in­vest­ments in health­care in­fra­struc­ture are es­sen­tial, “the pub­lic has every right to ask, where is the val­ue?” giv­en the sums spent.

Teelucks­ingh not­ed that sys­tems al­ready ex­ist. “What we need is the courage and strength to main­tain these fa­cil­i­ties. Cit­i­zens de­serve to see ex­act­ly what over a bil­lion dol­lars has pro­duced or failed to pro­duce.”

Teelucks­ingh, based at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, was placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave by the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) af­ter a satir­i­cal ar­ti­cle ti­tled The Em­per­or’s New Hos­pi­tal look­ing at the Cen­tral Block con­struc­tion was pub­lished in the Guardian news­pa­per on March 21.

Then health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh lat­er or­dered his re­in­state­ment. Teelucks­ingh was re­cent­ly cleared of wrong­do­ing af­ter a SWRHA in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“It clear­ly struck a chord—not on­ly with the pub­lic but al­so with those in po­si­tions of pow­er. We need ac­count­abil­i­ty for pub­lic funds, trans­paren­cy in pro­cure­ment and a full me­dia tour of the site,” he said on Fri­day.

“Health­care must not be treat­ed as a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball.”

He stressed that Cen­tral Block was meant to re­store dig­ni­ty to pa­tients and im­prove con­di­tions for health­care work­ers. “We do not want re­peat­ed de­lays, es­ca­lat­ing costs and far too many unan­swered ques­tions. No gleam­ing façade can con­ceal the re­al­i­ty of a sys­tem stretched to its break­ing point.”

Teelucks­ingh al­so ques­tioned the $13 mil­lion-plus cost of re­fur­bish­ing the med­ical li­brary. “It’s time for full dis­clo­sure, in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny and above all, a cred­i­ble time­line for com­ple­tion that the pub­lic can trust.”

Op­er­a­tion and main­te­nance will be ma­jor State costs—Khan

For­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said he be­lieved a new hos­pi­tal was not nec­es­sary.

“I think if they had kept the pre­vi­ous Cen­tral Block, retro­fit­ted it and used the mon­ey to start the process of putting di­ag­nos­tic cen­tres in the Port-of-Spain Hos­pi­tal to­geth­er with sur­gi­cal fa­cil­i­ties, a nurs­ing hos­tel, a ter­tiary med­ical cen­tre for lec­tures and a nurs­ing school, it would have been bet­ter.”

He said that ap­proach would have cost tax­pay­ers less.

“You would have got­ten much more val­ue for the same amount of mon­ey.”

Khan added that op­er­at­ing and main­tain­ing the new hos­pi­tal will gen­er­ate ma­jor costs for the State.

“Staff, equip­ment, main­te­nance, dis­pos­ables and con­tin­u­ous ex­pen­di­ture is go­ing to cost the State a lot of mon­ey. It’s go­ing to be a night­mare to get it com­mis­sioned.”

He said pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions must al­so shift.

“You can­not just give free med­ical care to every­body and then pay it from the pub­lic purse in­def­i­nite­ly. You have to put on the think­ing cap and mix it with a pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor … so the pri­vate sec­tor would pay for the pub­lic sec­tor.”

In 2013, Khan an­nounced that the British gov­ern­ment would as­sist in con­struct­ing a med­ical cam­pus at the hos­pi­tal via an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank loan of $5 bil­lion. The loan would have been re­paid af­ter com­ple­tion at one per cent in­ter­est over 15 years. That plan nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

BOX

Even if it opens, it will be at lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty–Idi Stu­art

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion Idi Stu­art wel­comed the new 13-floor hos­pi­tal, as the old Cen­tral Block was con­demned by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion and en­gi­neers years ago, af­ter the hos­pi­tal was hit by a 6.9 earth­quake in 2018.

Stu­art ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments to Khan, stat­ing that the health sec­tor has to start gen­er­at­ing an in­come to sup­ple­ment its ex­pen­di­ture.

He ad­mit­ted that our health care ser­vices are a bur­den on tax­pay­ers, stat­ing that this sit­u­a­tion would on­ly get worse if we fail to ed­u­cate cit­i­zens about non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

Stu­art said health min­is­ters over the years love to see aes­thet­ics and tall build­ings dot our land­scape.

“And if they be­lieve there is a build­ing and they see some­thing tan­gi­ble ... they see some­thing vis­i­ble, they be­lieve that the min­is­ter is work­ing. So these Ude­cott projects are where our fo­cus has been.”

He said the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has re­buked this, em­pha­sis­ing that our fo­cus should be on keep­ing cit­i­zens healthy and that our pri­ma­ry health­care fa­cil­i­ties op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

Stu­art ad­mit­ted that the prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the eleventh hour of the gen­er­al elec­tion by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion was a game of “pol­i­tics”.

He said many of these hos­pi­tals are still be­ing paid for by tax­pay­ers.

“And now you have sad­dled the coun­try with these enor­mous loans.”

Fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, Stu­art said the bee­hive of ac­tiv­i­ty on the project has slowed down.

At this stage, he said con­tain­ers should be on the site to of­fload beds, fur­ni­ture and equip­ment.

“You are not see­ing con­tain­ers rest­ing down in their num­bers. Even if it opens, it will open at a lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty.”