Georgetown : Minister of State Joseph Harmon, today revealed that Cabinet has taken the decision to use the money earmarked for the construction of Guyana’s first Specialty Hospital for the improvement of primary health care across the country.
At a post-Cabinet media briefing at the Ministry of the Presidency, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Minister Harmon explained that a consultancy firm will be tasked with compiling a comprehensive report on the status of the hospital, “after which a decision will be made on the way forward”.
Minister Harmon explained that Government is looking to use the US$14M balance of the US$18M loan from the Exim Bank of India to improve health care at public hospitals and other health institutions in Guyana. He said, “The current thinking of the Administration is that once those sums of money are available, that it will prefer that the monies be spent in other areas that have to do with primary health care…We believe that the delivery of health care services to the people is much more important in this stage of our development than what we call medical tourism”.
Minister Harmon added that the move to suspend construction on the facility resulted widely from the delay in timelines and inadequate accountability for public funds by the contracting firm, India-based Surendra Engineering Company Ltd (SECL). It was reported that the company had issued to the Guyana Government, a forged document purporting to have emanated from the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT).
Surendra Engineering Company Ltd was given the contract to build and design the US$150 million project. The joint opposition, now in power, long before issues of fraud surfaced, had suggested that funding for the Specialty Hospital should be spent on upgrading and expanding of services at all state hospitals; this is the exact position now being embraced by the Government.
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