Nominees for new GPHC Board being considered – Minister Norton

Jan 05, 2017 News

-but careful consideration to be given to choice for chairmanship

The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is currently operating without a Board of Directors. As a Corporation, it is legally required that a Board be in place at the institution.

Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton

Although it is customary for the Board to be dissolved at the end of November each year, contracts for each member are usually renewed thereafter. Installed Boards have been known to last for at least three years.
However, under the recently ended tenure of (former) Senior Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton, the Board was dissolved as expected on November 30, 2016 but the contracts of the members were not renewed. The hospital has been operating without a Board ever since.
Allegations have been made that the decision to dissolve the Board and not renew the contracts of the members was taken by Minister Norton because of a strained relationship with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Dr. Carl ‘Max’ Hanoman.
Although the Minister has not substantiated such allegations, at the Ministry of Public Health’s end of year press conference last Friday he did note that “it is a policy that we evaluate very carefully, our choice of chairman for the different boards across the different ministries (and) we are certainly following that policy.”
When asked if efforts were being made to install a new Board, the Minister said, “We are in the process…We already have the nominees from the different entities that are supposed to supply their personnel and it is only that which the Minister has from that amount that the chairman will be chosen.”
Although Dr. Noel Blackman was slated to be appointed Chairman of the Board, Dr. Hanoman, was instead appointed just under a year ago. This development was owing to the fact that Dr. Blackman was arrested and charged for some criminal indiscretion linked to his legal practice in the United States.
Dr. Hanoman would moreover serve in the capacity of Chairman for approximately eight months before the Board was dissolved. Upon accepting his appointment last year, Dr. Hanoman revealed that before he was appointed the GPHC was faced with a predicament due to the fact that no Board was in place.
The predicament, Dr. Hanoman said last year, included multiple lawsuits that were allowing for the wastage of taxpayers’ money. Without specifying the lawsuits in question, the Chairman informed, “There are more than one or two cases involving the Georgetown Hospital and we keep paying these members who are sidelined.”
But this state of affairs could have been avoided altogether, had the hospital not broken Corporate laws, which he said occurs when there is no Board in place.
Dr. Hanoman explained that the life of the previous Board ended in March 2015 and there was no Board from June 2015 to March 2016. He was asked to take up the chairmanship of the hospital in March 2016 after Dr. Blackman’s appointment was revoked.
According to Dr. Hanoman, while he is thankful to the Government for the confidence reposed in him to take on the role of Chairman, he expressed, in no uncertain terms, that it was absolutely wrong for the GPHC to have ever been without a Board since becoming a Corporation.
”Georgetown Hospital being a Corporation must never be without a Board. Once there is not a Board all the rules and regulations are broken. Corporate laws are strange laws and so we have to be careful; we can end up in legal dilemmas because actions done without a Board, if no Board is in place, are brought to the court,” Dr. Hanoman asserted.

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