The Montser­rat gov­ern­ment says it has signed a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract with a St. Lu­cia-based con­struc­tion com­pa­ny to build the third phase of the New Na­tion­al Hos­pi­tal of Montser­rat project.

A state­ment by the Min­istry of Health and So­cial Ser­vices said the EC$102.8 mil­lion (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) con­tract had been signed with Con­struc­tion & In­dus­tri­al Equip­ment (CIE) and “ marks the be­gin­ning of the con­struc­tion of a 75,000 plus square foot, state-of-the-art health­care fa­cil­i­ty that will pro­vide world-class ser­vices to the peo­ple of Montser­rat”.

It said that CIE is set to be­gin work in April 2025, fol­low­ing an ini­tial mo­bi­liza­tion phase start­ing in March this year.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the project is slat­ed for com­ple­tion with­in two years and the  New Na­tion­al Hos­pi­tal will fea­ture a com­pre­hen­sive range of ser­vices, in­clud­ing a di­ag­nos­tics and treat­ment cen­ter, phar­ma­cy, cater­ing and laun­dry fa­cil­i­ties, ster­il­iza­tion ar­eas, pa­tient wards, birthing cen­ter, op­er­at­ing the­ater, lab­o­ra­to­ry among oth­er fa­cil­i­ties “all of which are de­signed to de­liv­er high-qual­i­ty health­care and en­sure pa­tients have ac­cess to the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy for di­ag­nos­ing and treat­ing var­i­ous con­di­tions”.

The Min­istry of Health and So­cial Ser­vices said that while every ef­fort will be made to min­i­mize dis­rup­tions to hos­pi­tal ac­tiv­i­ties “cer­tain phas­es of con­struc­tion may re­quire tem­po­rary ad­just­ments”.

BRADES, Montser­rat, Jan 27, CMC

CMC/ag/ir/2025