KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia says con­struc­tion of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Cen­tral Block re­mains with­in its $1.2 bil­lion bud­get and is on course for com­mis­sion­ing in March 2025.

Gar­cia re­spond­ed to a re­quest for an up­date from Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee chair­man Wade Mark at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing to en­quire in­to Ude­cott’s au­dit­ed ac­counts, bal­ance sheets and oth­er fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2017-2018. 

While Shang­hai Con­struc­tion orig­i­nal­ly got the con­tract, Gar­cia said COVID-19 caused sev­er­al is­sues, lead­ing to a mu­tu­al ter­mi­na­tion.

Ude­cott ap­proached Cab­i­net and agreed to break the project in­to pack­ages to al­low lo­cal con­trac­tors to par­tic­i­pate. It award­ed con­tracts to lo­cal firms Uni­ver­sal Struc­tures Ltd and Be­ston Con­sult­ing Ltd.

Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Ltd will un­der­take struc­tur­al out­fit­ting.

Gar­cia said de­liv­ery in March of 2025 would in­clude the phys­i­cal build­ing, out­fit­ting, staff train­ing, test­ing and com­mis­sion­ing.

Ude­cott held the top­ping-off cer­e­mo­ny last month, mark­ing the com­ple­tion of the build­ing core. Gar­cia said Uni­ver­sal ex­pe­ri­enced mi­nor chal­lenges be­cause of the “ex­treme­ly com­plex” con­struc­tion. 

Gar­cia said that Ude­cott had a quest to de­vel­op the con­struc­tion sec­tor, so it pro­vid­ed the firm with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­take the project.

He said Uni­ver­sal over­came chal­lenges and com­plet­ed the core. Phase two is un­der­way, and Gar­cia said there is hope for com­ple­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2024.

Ten­der­ing for med­ical equip­ment, ICT and fur­ni­ture was com­plete, he said and Ude­cott was draft­ing a note to Cab­i­net for the award of a con­tract. 

He said all the pro­po­nents for equip­ment sup­ply and fur­ni­ture were lo­cal com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, the ICT pr ovider is a for­eign com­pa­ny. 

“The project is on stream to be com­plet­ed, com­mis­sioned and put in­to use by March 2025, with com­plet­ed con­struc­tion works by Sep­tem­ber 2024,” Gar­cia said.

Ude­cott proud of work on Red House

Mark al­so ques­tioned Ude­cott’s Red House restora­tion, say­ing while it was a com­plet­ed project, Par­lia­ment staff had to find buck­ets to cap­ture wa­ter dur­ing rain­fall due to a leak­ing roof. He asked Gar­cia if he felt con­trac­tors pro­vid­ed val­ue for mon­ey on the $441 mil­lion project.

Gar­cia said Ude­cott was “ex­treme­ly” proud of its work on Par­lia­ment and con­sid­ers it a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment. He said the board has done what no oth­er could in the past 17 years.

Re­gard­ing the leaks, he was sat­is­fied that the com­pa­ny had re­solved the is­sue, adding there was a team mon­i­tor­ing leaks. He said some leaks were not from the roof, as there was a con­den­sa­tion is­sue in the north cham­ber. He said Ude­cott cor­rect­ed the de­fec­tive duct­ing.

“We are con­fi­dent that we have over­come the leak prob­lem, but it is an old build­ing that was re­fur­bished, and prob­lems will arise from time to time. You know that in our house, you have to change the bulbs. You have to cor­rect the plumb­ing be­cause a house, like a build­ing at times, could be equat­ed to a liv­ing or­gan­ism,” he said.

Gar­cia said the restora­tion was a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment done by na­tion­als and over 24 small and medi­um-sized con­trac­tors with­in bud­get and time.

But Mark ques­tioned what per­cent­age of for­eign­ers were in­volved, re­call­ing that he saw many Venezue­lans work­ing on the project. Gar­cia said all 24 com­pa­nies were T&T reg­is­tered and the own­ers were na­tion­als. 

“We, as a pol­i­cy in Ude­cott, do not get in­volved in the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment of our con­trac­tors be­cause it has cer­tain le­gal im­pli­ca­tions for us.

As far as I am aware, all of the com­pa­nies that did the work on the Red House are lo­cal­ly reg­is­tered com­pa­nies, owned and man­aged by lo­cals who are, as far as I am aware, na­tion­als of T&T. If they em­ployed Venezue­lans, I do not know.”

Mark re­quest­ed a list of the con­trac­tors in­volved. Gar­cia said Ude­cott pub­lished it as an ad­ver­tise­ment in the news­pa­per but would sub­mit it to the com­mit­tee.