Minister of Finance Winston Jordan has indicated that it will cost taxpayers over $1 billion to transform the Ocean View Hotel and Conference Centre into a specialised care facility for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients.
“To retrofit and outfit it will be more than a billion [and this] excludes running cost,” Jordan said yesterday during an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI).
Asked if the cost included a purchase price, Jordan said that was a “different matter which can’t be dealt with at this time.”
It was recently announced that the former hotel, located along the Rupert Craig Highway at Liliendaal, was chosen as the site to be transformed into a specialised COVID-19 hospital. However, following that announcement, no word was given on whether the building was leased or bought. It has not been revealed how the building was selected in the first instance.
On Thursday, Director General Joseph Harmon told reporters that financial arrangements were still being worked out for the ongoing works and added that the major rehabilitation had begun without a signed contract.
According to Harmon, he could not say what the overall cost for rehabilitation works to the structure is but the owners of the building allowed for works to be carried out even before any formal contracts were signed.
“The financial arrangements are still being worked out but because it is a matter of national urgency I think that facility was made available to the Ministry of Public Health,” Harmon said, while noting that he believes that upon its completion, the facility will be the first dedicated COVID-19 hospital in the Caribbean.
Other statements made by Harmon suggest that the facility, which is owned by APNU+AFC coalition supporter Jacob Rambarran, is likely to be used in the long term for specialised health services.
“Going forward we may not have pandemics, we may have epidemics and so on but going forward that is going to be a facility for this purpose,” Harmon said.
Following questions about the safety of the structure and its potential vulnerability to overtopping of the sea defence, Harmon stated that he believed that works are also ongoing in the sea defence area just beyond the structure. He added that he could not recall any recent overtopping of the defence that affected that structure.
“I think that at the end of it, in a very short space of time, we will have an A-1 facility where we can be able to say to the world that this is what we are doing for Guyanese who are affected by this COVID virus,” Harmon said.
Notably this A-1 facility in the same vicinity where the abandoned “specialty hospital” was to be located.
The US18 million project, which was being funded by the Indian government, collapsed in 2016 after the handpicked contractor Fedders Lloyd was barred by the World Bank for participating in project until April 2020.
Fedders Lloyd was selected by the coalition to execute the project after the original contractor Surendra Engineering Company Limited, which was selected in August 2012 amid controversy, was dismissed from the project by the former PPP/C administration on a variety of grounds, including producing false documents.
