Holness admits CRH rebuild would have been cheaper

WESTERN BUREAU:

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has admitted that it would have been more cost-effective to demolish and rebuild the Montego Bay-based Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) when it started having infrastructural problems, instead of rehabilitating it over the past decade.

“Building a hospital is not the same as building a hotel,” Holness said at the reopening of the Accident and Emergency Department on Friday, noting that a few hotels have been built in the time taken to restore the hospital .

“ … It is even more complicated when you are trying to rehabilitate a building that was not built for the purposes for which you are trying to achieve its final rehabilitation. In retrospect, it may have been a quicker operation to have torn down the building and just build a new one,” he said.

“Politically, we were not certain whether or not the public would have appreciated that (demolition). But I can tell you that going forward, the economics of the matter is that it is better to just tear down those old buildings and build them brand new,” the prime minister said. “I don’t believe that we will want to entertain this business of trying to rehabilitate buildings that have passed their useful life.”

In 2017, noxious fumes forced the evacuation of its first three floors at the Mount Salem-based Type A hospital.

In 2018, one year after the CRH’s rehabilitation began, the Ministry of Health & Wellness said that simply demolishing and rebuilding the hospital would not be an option due to the estimated cost being more than what it would cost to fix the issues.

At that time, a total rebuild was estimated at some US$150 million (J$23.7 billion). The cost to rehabilitate the 10-floor facility now stands at $25 billion, more than 12 times the original $2 billion initially budgeted.

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said that the CRH’s years-long physical decline must not be repeated.

“When we build buildings, we must have a maintenance regime that ensures, like the human body or the motor vehicle, that there is routine maintenance to get the maximum value from them. CRH, which was 50 years plus when it collapsed, had no such sufficient maintenance arrangement,” said Tufton.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com