A claim that flood water may have helped to wipe out key procurement files at University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) triggered disbelief and sharp scrutiny during Tuesday’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting as Chairman Julian Robinson demanded answers over how documents linked to hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts could simply vanish.

The issue arose as the committee examined one of the auditor general’s most troubling findings in a wider performance audit of procurement at UHWI. That report found that the hospital failed to provide procurement documentation for 51 of 111 sampled contracts, with a total value of about $521 million. The audit said the missing records prevented proper checks of whether the contracts followed procurement rules and whether public money was spent transparently and with value for money in mind.

By the time UHWI appeared before the committee this week, the position had improved only partly. Robinson said 28 files valued at $269 million had since been located, but 22 files worth $246 million were still missing and one more, linked to roughly $18 million, remained incomplete. He made clear that, for him, the matter stood out even among a series of serious findings raised in the audit.

Pressed to explain how records of completed procurements were supposed to be stored, senior director of public procurement at UHWI Ainsworth Buckeridge told lawmakers that the standard procedure for each procurement activity had not been properly followed when he was working in a different department.

“The standard operating procedure is that each document procurement activity is filed in a file folder and placed in a hard binder and then transferred to a storage area where it can be retrieved. Upon my return to the unit, I realised that this practise wasn’t being followed, hence the reason why these files could not be located. Those files should have been in a storage area, [and] my understanding is that area was flooded at least twice or three times based on heavy rainfall,” Buckeridge said.

That explanation was quickly challenged by Robinson, who said the committee could not simply accept flooding as the reason so many records were still missing. He also questioned why there appeared to be no clear dates, reports, or official record of the alleged flooding.

“When were those three cases of flood, because it is the first time we hearing that. I don’t know if that was shared with the Auditor General’s Department, and if you are storing files in a place that flood out easy, move it somewhere else if that is the case, but help me on that one because, tell me when those flooding took place and whether those were reported to the board, to the internal audit committee etc, and was there a request for removal to a different storage area?”

Buckeridge, however, could not provide those details. He said he only understood that flooding had happened, but was unable to say exactly when or how often.

That response appeared to heighten the committee’s concern. Robinson made it clear that the explanation raised even more questions, especially given the value of the contracts involved and the seriousness of the audit findings.

“We could never accept that 50 per cent of documents valuing $280 million can’t be found because of flooding. I mean, we have not even assessed the ones you have as yet to determine whether you’re following proper procedure… So let me ask you, the files we can’t find, did they walk out of the hospital and go up on Mona Road? First we hear rainfall wet up some files…but how can so many files be missing? Did somebody take them out of the hospital and go somewhere with them,” Robinson queried as he maintained a puzzled look on his face.

The concern deepened further when UHWI’s Chief Audit Executive Dwight McLeish told the committee that the problem was not new. He said poor documentation had been flagged several times before by internal audit and had become a long-running issue inside the institution.

“The internal audit function had done six reviews of the procurement section and the issue of documentation not being found is institutionalised, it is systemic. We have done reviews of it, and on several occasions would ask them to put systems in place to mitigate against that, and it is in the internal audit reports,” McLeish said.

That disclosure appeared to frustrate Robinson even more as he asked what has been done to fix the problem.

In response, McLeish said management had recently moved to store procurement records in filing cabinets and hard folders.

That answer triggered one of the strongest reactions of the sitting, with Robinson expressing disbelief that a major public institution could still be relying on such a basic system in 2026. He suggested that many people would struggle to see that as a serious response to a problem involving public contracts worth millions of dollars.

“No, hold on, help me again, because you are saying you put in place filing cabinets… You can’t tell me that the University Hospital of the West Indies that is spending billions of taxpayers’ money is just putting in filing cabinets?” Robinson said.

He then broadened the criticism, saying the explanation did not match what should be expected in a modern public institution and suggested that important procurement records should not be left to depend only on physical files that can be lost, damaged, or destroyed.

“People are watching [and] people are gonna think this is a joke business, you know. People really going to think it’s a joke thing, that we can be saying in 2026 that an institution that spends billions of dollars is just putting in filing cabinets and file jackets and you are storing these in a holding area that flood out three times and nobody is held accountable,” he said.

“Nobody needs to be a procurement specialist and accounting professional to know that that is basic. I would like the report on that formally to be brought back to the committee because I can’t accept it, I cannot accept that in this day and age this is where we’re at, cannot accept that, and I don’t have enough evidence to conclude that this is deliberate and I won’t say it, but it is hard not to come to that conclusion,” Robinson said in disbelief.

The discussion also drew concern from Member of Parliament for St Andrew West Rural Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, who questioned whether UHWI had any proper records management system at all. Her comments widened the issue beyond the missing files themselves and pointed to what she suggested was a deeper accountability problem.

Cuthbert-Flynn, who served as the state minister of health and wellness from 2020-2023, said what the committee was hearing was “astounding”, and argued that the continued failure to hold people accountable for serious administrative breakdowns was one of the reasons public confidence in State institutions remained weak.

“We talk about productivity and the lack of productivity, and this is exactly one of the reasons why we’re not moving this country, because the lack of will and the fact that you mentioned persons not being held accountable, if it is that we don’t get to a place in Jamaica where we can hire and fire people because of non-accountability, these things will continue,” she said.