URBAN Development Corporation (Udecott) chairman Noel Garcia said the Central Block of the PoS General Hospital is expected to be completed and commissioned by early 2025. He said the project remains within budget.

Garcia was responding to questions from Newsday on Tuesday following statements by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal during the UNC’s Monday Night Report at Hillview College.

Moonilal said the original date of completion was supposed to be March 1, with 13 levels completed. He said from his observations, only six levels have been completed.

He reminded that the contractor chosen for the job had submitted a bid two days after the due date, because of a technical glitch in the tendering system. He asked if the project had exceeded its original budget of $1.6 billion, and whether the contractor was being charged for late completion per the terms of the original contract.

Contacted for a response, Garcia said he would not respond directly to Moonilal, as the MP was speaking from a political platform, and neither he nor the technical staff at Udecott are politicians. He gave Newsday an update on the project, which he said is still within budget.

“We are still projecting that the Central Block will be finished in the third quarter of 2024. We should begin commissioning and installation of equipment in October 2024, and commission the hospital, i.e, test and commission the equipment and have it up and running in early 2025.

“We are now up to level 12 and we expect to reach level 13 by the end of this month. Works on outfitting and on the curtain wall are to begin in May and hopefully by June or July of this year those works would be completed.”

Garcia said the original completion dates went through the window because of the covid lockdown.

“We had lockdowns, supply chain issues, material shortages, so I really cannot hold to the original date. I don’t think anywhere in the world they held to the original date because covid created severe disruptions.

"We had at least two lockdowns in Trinidad, we had the issue of shipping coming out of China where a container moved from US$4,000 to US$19,000, you had shortages of steel and other materials. So to go back and talk about the original completion date is a nonsense. We did not create covid19, it was an event that none of us anticipated,” Garcia said.

Asked about the contractual clause referred to by Moonilal, Garcia said a politician could not tell Udecott how to run its construction management.

Work on the construction of the block began in May 2019 by Shanghai Group Construction Ltd, which terminated its contract in late 2021. Local contractor Universal Steel restarted work in August.