Kay-marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

An open­ing date for the long-await­ed Cen­tral Block at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH) has not yet been set.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Lack­ram Bo­doe, the date will on­ly be an­nounced af­ter a tech­ni­cal team con­firms the fa­cil­i­ty is ready to re­ceive pa­tients.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Bo­doe said the team is work­ing to en­sure the new fa­cil­i­ty is ful­ly op­er­a­tional.

“A team com­pris­ing of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health, NWRHA and UDE­COTT is work­ing to en­sure op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Cen­tral Block at the POS­GH.

“An open­ing date will be de­ter­mined when this tech­ni­cal team sub­mits its fi­nal re­port con­firm­ing that the fa­cil­i­ty is ready to re­ceive pa­tients,” he said.

His com­ments come days af­ter the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture for­mal­ly hand­ed over the com­plet­ed Cen­tral block to the Min­istry of Health.

The Cen­tral block has been the sub­ject of po­lit­i­cal de­bate for quite some time af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley held a com­ple­tion cer­e­mo­ny in one of his fi­nal acts be­fore his re­tire­ment in March last year.

How­ev­er, since tak­ing of­fice in April 2025, the Gov­ern­ment has ar­gued that the for­mer Kei­th Row­ley-ad­min­is­tra­tion de­clared the project com­plete too soon, say­ing key con­struc­tion and out­fit­ting work was still un­fin­ished.