Government Senator Charles Sinclair is proposing that the renovation work at the Cornwall Regional Hospital which has been plagued with delays for more than three years be declared a national development project.

Charles said this should be done if it will speed up the work at the premier health facility in western Jamaica.

“It is time we complete the task at hand. If this takes placing the restoration under the portfolio of the Prime Minister as some have said, but I don’t see as necessary, so be it,” Charles added.

He was speaking in the Senate on Friday while making his contribution to the 2021/22 State of the Nation Debate.

He acknowledged that the work to restore the hospital has taken much longer than expected.

“As has been spoken about, the lack of adequate maintenance since the construction of the hospital in the late 1960s and early 1970s undoubtedly led us to this point.

“The simple truth is that the people of western Jamaica desire that the  premier facility for health care in the region must be restored by any means necessary,” Sinclair said.

The multi-storey facility has been operating at a fraction of its capacity since 2016 when air quality issues were identified on three floors of the hospital resulting in relocation of services. The following year, with the problems continuing, 123 beds were relocated to the quadrants at Cornwall and Falmouth hospitals.

A heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) consultant was contracted to design a HVAC system for the first five floors at the facility. At the same time, additional structural defects and mould growth were identified during the assessment period.

That resulted in the building being evacuated, except for the Radiotherapy Department, and a local company was contracted for the total rehabilitation of the building.

In October, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton told Observer Online that an overseas company with significant experience in hospital build-out has been brought in to help manage the delay-plagued $4-billion renovation project.

“What we’ve done now is try to strengthen the management process by bringing in a management entity that has significant hospital experience. The company will act as the quality assurance agent for the project. So we’re hoping that we can get standards established and maintained as the contractors work. We’re hoping that that will significantly reduce the variation challenges that we’ve had in the past,” Tufton said.

The company, WSP, is based in the United States and is said to be one of the world’s leading engineering consulting firms.