PM Kamla calls cost of Tobago hospital a "scandal"

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has described as a "scandal" the cost overruns at the Scarborough Hospital, which has been under constructtion for close to a decade.

The original cost of the 100-bed institution was $136 million but it is now estimated that the cost will be around $760 million when it is completed and operational in 2011. That would amount to $7 million a bed.

"I am horrified and outraged at how much this facility is costing taxpayers and the time it is taking to have the project completed,” Persad-Bissessar said Saturday during a tour of the incomple structure.

“This is unacceptable. Taxpayers should not have to carry such a burden,” she said.
"It's like you're walking on gold…I cannot believe it took 10 years for us to reach here, for a 100-bed hospital," Persad-Bissessar said. She added, "It's like a black hole; money just keeps going into it and it disappears."

Still she pledged to do everything possible to get the hospital completed and running. However she noted that it can't be done immediately.

"This was supposed to be completed this month. As we speak and as you can see, it is nowhere near to completion...My heart aches for the people of Tobago," she said.

"So we are committed to this project, the inception of this project was really in the UNC days and now that we have come back into Government...we will have to complete it," she added.

The Prime Minister reminded reporters accompanying her on the tour that the hospital is one of the projects that Attorney General Anand Ramlogan is investigating.

Read this story: AG appoints 5-member team to probe state agencies; seeks citizens' help

Health Minister Therese Baptiste-Cornelis told reporters the finance minister has provided an additional $50 million to the contractors, China Railway Construction Company (CRCC), which was not in the budget of the previous administration.

She said she has also just received an invoice $28 million invoice and noted that NIPDEC, the government agency responsible for supervising the project, has queried certain matters about the deployment of equipment.

The Scarborough Hospital has been the focus of scandal and confusion, with claims of corruption, nepotism and other financial wrongdoing.

The Manning government changed the original contractors. That move led to arbitration proceedings, which resulted in an additional cost of $18 million in legal fees.