House passes $259M to complete health ministry’s head office

Construction on the new Ministry of Health’s head office at Brickdam, Georgetown, will advance this year, following the approval of $259 million in the Committee of Supply, on Thursday.

The contract for the long-standing project was awarded to Chung’s Global Enterprise, during the tenure of the former APNU+AFC Administration.

Government had terminated the contract, after discovering several breaches in the agreement, including delays in the completion of the building.

‘…as you rightly said in the current programme that we just dealt with, this was one of the APNU+AFC projects. But it went beyond budget and we are now trying to fix it and correct some of the defects that were there,” Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony told the committee.

He assured that the project will restart and be completed this year.

“…by mid of this year it should be completed. Right now, it’s one schedule, based on the timelines that we have set with the new contractor,” he underscored.  

Another $13 million, the minister said, has been set aside for the supervising firm to monitor the project to completion.