PM: Jamaica has money, but lacks expertise to build hospitals

WESTERN BUREAU:

Jamaica’s failure to construct a public hospital in more than four decades has left the Government without the technical expertise needed to deliver major healthcare projects efficiently, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has acknowledged.

In a sweeping assessment of the country’s deteriorating public infrastructure, Holness said the prolonged rehabilitation of Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) exposed a much deeper national problem than delays and cost overruns.

“The bigger problem, my friends, is that we have not built a hospital in over 40 years,” he said during Friday’s reopening of the Accident and Emergency Department at the Montego Bay, St James-based hospital.

“That means the skills and the talent and the know-how are not resident in the Government of Jamaica right now.”

The prime minister said the difficulties experienced at CRH had forced him to confront the limitations within the public sector, including its inability to translate increased capital allocations into completed infrastructure projects.

“We simply do not have an embedded culture of quickly converting the capital budget into concrete,” Holness said.

He argued that while the Government had substantially increased healthcare capital spending, the country’s administrative and technical systems had failed to keep pace.

According to figures presented by the prime minister, the health sector’s capital budget increased from approximately $1.54 billion in 2016-2017 to $11.5 billion in 2024-2025, before reaching $10.18 billion in 2025-2026.

CHALLENGES

However, he acknowledged that allocating money was only one part of the challenge.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘We have allocated this, this is the budget.’ We have the money to spend, but still, the Ministry of Health, at the end of every year, sends back a large part of its capital budget,” he said.

Holness pointed to the age of Jamaica’s public hospitals as evidence of decades of insufficient investment.

He noted that several of the country’s 24 public hospitals were established before Independence in 1962, including the Kingston Public Hospital, the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, the Bellevue Hospital, and the Spanish Town Hospital.

“If it is that we are an independent country, why are we relying on colonial-era infrastructure?” he questioned.

The prime minister said the consequences extended beyond healthcare to schools, roads and water systems, many of which were deteriorating while still being used by the public.

He also questioned whether rehabilitating CRH had been the most economical approach, suggesting that demolishing the ageing building and constructing a new facility might have been faster.

“In retrospect, it may have been a quicker operation to have torn down the building and just build a new,” he said.

“Going forward, the economics is that it is better to just tear down those old buildings and build brand new.”

Holness explained that modern hospitals required more sophisticated electrical, air-conditioning and other technical systems than those envisaged when CRH was constructed in the 1970s.

He contrasted the hospital’s prolonged rehabilitation with the speed at which new hotels had been constructed along Jamaica’s north coast, while cautioning that healthcare facilities were significantly more complicated.

“Building a hospital is not the same as building a hotel,” he stressed.

The prime minister said Jamaica must now reform its bureaucracy and develop a stronger culture of execution if the country is to meet its development ambitions.

“We have a lot of work to do, and we must reform our bureaucracy, and we must change our culture,” he said.

He also placed pressure on Tufton to complete the remaining work at CRH, saying he expected the institution to be returned to full public use.

“I’m holding the minister to account to deliver this hospital finally,” Holness declared.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com