Skeldon Hospital equipment still non-functional three weeks after

Nov 27, 2018 News

The Guyana Power and Light’s Regional Engineer for Berbice has assured the Regional Chairman David Armogan that within a week’s time the Skeldon Hospital should be connected to the GPL grid.
According to Armogan, “By next week things should be up and running there as it should be”.

Region 6 chairman, David Armogan

He further added that when the application was made in Berbice to have the hospital connected to the electrical grid, “They had to send it to Georgetown for an assessment, they had to get transformers and whole lot of things, and that alone takes a lot of time, I assume. But it was only when it was raised by me that GPL apparently dug up on the thing. It was apparently there lying down and nobody was following it up with them. I called the guy at GPL (Regional Engineer Mr. Rose) and he told me by next week, they already have the transformer, but it just has to hook up now”.
A few weeks ago, at the Regional Democratic Council’s Monthly Statutory meeting, Armogan had brought to light several deficiencies that are currently existing at the Skeldon Public Hospital.
The ultrasound machines, the x-ray machines, physiotherapy and even the air conditioning units have been inoperable for over two months.
Director of the Regional Health Services, Jevaughn Stephens had debunked what the chairman said about the services being down for that long. While he admitted that they were not working, he also added that it was only inoperable for a month. He had stated that since the closure of the Skeldon Estate, which provided electricity to the hospital, they were forced to shut down the services due to the minimal generating of power to the institution.

Director of the Regional Health Services Jevaughn Stephens

“We had to take off some of the services because we got power from GuySuco and we are no longer getting that from GuySuco. An assessment was done and we tried to put it on the GPL grid… that is what is taking the time, because if we operate the equipment now, we are going to be running at a risk. Every day we are calling GPL,” Stephens had uttered.
Meanwhile, the two health centres in the region located at Plegt Anker, East Bank Berbice and Number 76 Village, Corentyne, Berbice, built at a cost of $16M and $20M respectively, are also still not in operation.
Armogan mentioned that, “they are trying to now put together staff, but they also have to do some more work in terms of plumbing”. He explained that when the buildings were built, “They did the bare buildings”, while referring to it as “very short-sighted”.
Armogan said that although two years had gone by, “They didn’t put it into the last budget to do the plumbing and electricity, so this was very short-sighted of the engineering department”.
The Director of Health was given two months to get the health centres up and running by Armogan.
The contract for the Plegt Anker Health Centre was awarded in 2016 to Contractor Dennis Tahal at a cost of $16M while the Number 76 Health Centre contract was awarded to Memorex Construction Services in early 2017 at a cost of $20M. Both buildings were left abandoned, the Vice Chairman said.
When Kaieteur News had visited the Plegt Anker Health Centre a day after it was raised at the RDC, cleaners attached to the health sector in the region were seen weeding, washing windows, sweeping the interior of the building and executing other works to “get things in order”. They were supervised by five nurses at the time. Wasp nests had taken over the ceiling of the building.

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