China company gets hospital nod

Minister of Health Jerry Narace, along with THA Chief Secretary Orville London, UdeCOTT Chairman Calder Hart and a number of key health officials in Tobago toured the desolate Signal Hill site where the announcement was made on Friday.

The China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) has been given the nod to complete the beleaguered project in some 18 months to two years. According to Hart, the CRCC was the lowest bidder and its proposal to turnover a fully operational hospital has been accepted and forwarded to Minister Narace for his response.

A 14-member delegation from the CRCC met with THA officials one month ago to discuss the project and was reportedly given the nod over Sunway Construction (Caribbean) Limited of Malaysia and Beijing Luijian Corporation of China.

Hart assured that because of modifications to the existing strategy of design, the project will be completed within time and budget this time around.

“The companies that bid on this project realised that they had to construct within a time frame, that the budget was fixed and that obviously from our standpoint there will be no break or any work stops associated with any of the issues that affected the project to this point,” Hart said.

He also sought to give the assurance that despite concerns raised the new hospital will be able to withstand any environmental challenges and that the contractors would have to rectify defects on the existing structure to “not only meet the needs and aspirations of Tobago but obviously meet the most modern medical standards.”

The CRCC will also be responsible for equipping the new hospital when it is completed. An excited THA Chief Secretary, Orville London said that the proposed ideas for turning “a 1998 hospital into a 2008 hospital made the wait worthwhile.”

So far over TT$100 million have been spend on the project which was suspended for two years after being approximately 55 percent completed.

The site for the construction of the hospital was turned over in 2003 and in August 2005, six months after the project should have been completed, contractors NH International requested that the project managers (NIPDEC) be detached from the contract resulting in the matter going before an arbitration tribunal.