The Opposition Leader has issued a call in the Parliament for the Prime Minister to initiate a forensic audit into the operations of the South Western Regional Health Authority (SWRHA).
Speaking in Parliament yesterday on a motion calling for Government to improve the delivery of healthcare services to the people of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she received several documents and board notes via mail and has verified their authenticity.
The Opposition Leader alleged the documents point to, “Major sanitisation and other equipment at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH), which are crucial for ensuring that the NICU functions optimally to save newborn babies’ lives are deliberately being left unmaintained or in an inactive state to allegedly facilitate the SWRHA giving out millions of taxpayers’ dollars in rental contracts to selected private companies to do the same job that this equipment does.”
She said she had been reliably informed that the incinerator at the SFGH was down.
“We are reliably informed that the incinerator was functioning efficiently, but in August 2023, last year, it went down due to a lack of maintenance due to the unavailability of funding,” Persad-Bissessar claimed.
And instead of fixing it to the cost of $250,000, she alleged the hospital spent $1,553,625 in two months to outsource this service to private companies in 2023.
The Opposition Leader said according to her documents, those contracts were awarded to Piranha International Limited ($718,875) and Sanitec Limited ($834,750).
Persad-Bissessar further claimed that Guides Funeral Home was paid $40,000 to incinerate body parts.
The Opposition Leader went on to claim that the SFGH has so far spent $1.35 million on backup generators. She claimed that her documents showed that the SFGH is paying Standby Power $75,000 per week. She said the tendering process for new generators is October 2024 and the overall cost of renting those generators will increase to $2.6 million.
And Persad-Bissessar said the oxygen plant at the SFGH is malfunctioning while one of the two boilers at the hospital has been down since 2018.
“Today, I call upon the Government and the Prime Minister to commission a forensic audit into the SWRHA, let us see where taxpayers’ dollars are going and why is it this outsourcing continues to take place,” Persad-Bissessar asserted.
Meanwhile, the Opposition Leader also sought to remind the lower house that this motion into the health sector is the fourth such brought by her party since 2019.
“We have outlined the problems, and we have been saying for years that our hospitals under the PNM have become virtual killing fields, where people go in for simple procedures and come out as corpses because of the grossly improper healthcare they are receiving,” she posited.
The Opposition Leader also issued a stern warning to health workers to resist any orders from the Minister of Health to disseminate misleading or fraudulent statements about the public health sector as they can leave themselves vulnerable to legal action.
The warning came as the Port-of-Spain General Hospital (POSGH) is under the microscope following the deaths of several newborns at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). There have already been allegations that staff members were ordered to cover up problems at the PoSGH hours before PAHO officials commenced their probe.
“Do not do the bidding of the politicians,” Persad-Bissessar advised to loud desk thumping from her members of parliament.
The Opposition Leader added, “Because that could end you into trouble. You could be committing some kind of offence of misbehaviour in public office. So, we warn, we warn.”
Contributing earlier to the debate was Government MP Pennelope Beckles who criticised the Opposition’s motion, describing it as one that seeks to generalise and trivialise the state of healthcare while diminishing the good work of healthcare workers in this country.
The Minister of Planning and Development also chastised the Opposition for taking rumours as facts and having a field day for a national audience with “bogus half-truths”, particularly as it relates to the deaths of the infants at the PoSGH NICU.
“On the one hand, some people claim to be concerned and to care about the state of healthcare while on the other hand, displaying no qualms with playing games with the emotions of affected families by reckless and unfounded claims made in full glare of the public,” she lamented.
Beckles said that she is certain that following the completion of the PAHO investigation, the Ministry of Health and all other regional health authorities will adopt the recommendations to ensure that such circumstances are minimised or eliminated.