The Department of Public Information (DPI) yesterday said that President Irfaan Ali has expressed his displeasure at the slothful works at the Maternal and Paediatric Hospital, Ogle, East Coast Demerara and has instructed that these be expedited to facilitate a mid-2025 completion.
The hospital should have been finished around July this year.
The President issued instructions during a visit to the project site yesterday. “We are hoping that the contractor here will pick up some pace. We are not satisfied… and we are not going to shift our deadline on the completion of this hospital,” the president expressed.
DPI said that while external works on the structure and substructure are expected to be completed by January 2025, VAMED’s Project Manager, Diana Lopes informed Ali that internal works are slated to near completion by October 2025. According to DPI, Ali said this is unacceptable. “That’s not going to fly with us. That is far behind the project deadline, and we are going to be charging liquidated damages. We cannot accept this going to October,” the president emphasised. In the DPI release, Ali instructed that the contractor increase their manpower and begin working on a shift system to speed up the process. “You have to do a lot of the work simultaneously, and you have to have far more subcontractors here,” he urged.
The hospital will offer advanced medical services for mothers and babies, and is expected to be the first of its kind in the Caribbean. “This is a level five facility, one of the highest standards you would get for paediatric care. So, the construction and the design take into consideration the most modern equipment to match what the hospital is expected to deliver,” DPI quoted Ali as saying. Given the novelty and complexity of the services this hospital is slated to deliver, Ali explained that some imported labour in these specialty areas will be necessary in the first phase of the hospital’s operations.
“We have already started looking at areas that we will need specialists to come into so we can train our locals. This hospital and the other regional hospitals tell the story of how rapidly we have to train our nurses and medical technicians,” he said. When completed, the facility will have 256 beds, will cover 24,000 square meters of gross floor areas and will have an imaging suite which will include CT scans, X-rays, and Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning equipment. It will also feature a modern laboratory which will focus on conducting sophisticated testing.
President Ali was accompanied by Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony, who outlined several additional features of the hospital. “We will have a lot of sub-speciality paediatric care, and we will be providing a 24-hour service. We will have four operating theatres, one of which would specialise in cardiac surgeries,” the minister said. The project is being executed by Austrian company, VAMED, and the contract was signed on June 8, 2022. A sum of $10.3b was set aside for the hospital in this year’s budget. The sod for the project was turned on July 31st, 2022.
