Montego Bay mayor to press WRHA for Cornwall Regional rebuild briefing

WESTERN BUREAU:

With Cornwall Regional Hospital’s repair programme again set to stretch past the current calendar year, the St James Municipal Corporation plans to press hospital and regional health officials for a clearer account of where the works stand.

At the corporation’s monthly sitting in July, Montego Bay Mayor Richard Vernon, who also heads the StJMC, said he will write the management of the Type A facility seeking a formal status report.

“The CRH reports to the Western Regional Health Authority [WRHA], so either the chairman of the region, the regional director, the regional technical director, or the hospital’s chief executive officer can come here to make that report,” Vernon said. “We can get the report by sending an official request from the corporation, which I am going to ask to be sent to the regional director or the regional technical director, and then it can be presented at our next meeting.”

His remarks followed complaints from Kerry Thomas, the Mt Salem councillor whose division covers the hospital site. Thomas said earlier queries about the rebuild had gone unanswered.

“Some months ago, at this very council meeting, I asked about the update regarding the CRH, and our committee here should have written to them so we would get an official report as to the status of that restoration project,” Thomas stated. “Last month, no report came, so I was hoping that, in this month, that report would come to the council as to the current status of the restoration work.”

“It is disrespectful to this corporation, and the councillors who sit here, that the CRH cannot send an official report to this corporation to give us the status of the number one hospital in this parish, but still the deadline keeps moving,” Thomas added.

Vernon, however, stressed that any call for progress information must go through the proper channels.

“I doubt any request was sent to the CRH, so it is not a matter of us sending a request to them and that they have not responded, so I do not see it as disrespect. We have to do the right thing, which is to send the request, and then they will provide the necessary update,” he said.

The discussion came roughly two weeks after Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton outlined a revised schedule for finishing the full CRH overhaul, a scheme that has been in train since 2017. He said he anticipates completion inside the present financial year, which closes on March 31, 2027.

Opened in 1974, the hospital has been the subject of major remedial works since toxic vapours from its ventilation plant drove the evacuation of its first three floors in February 2017 — five months after the Accident and Emergency Department had already been cleared over related fears. The outlay is now put at $23.5 billion, almost 12 times the initial $2 billion estimate.