Saga of St. Joseph hospital
Publication: Weekend Nation
Date: Fri, May 16, 1997
Page: 12
Byline: Terry Ally
FROM THE DAY that St. Joseph Hospital (SJH) announced financial difficulties and the possibility of closure, the whole thing became political.
On one side, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), under whose watch in 1966 the hospital opened, was adamant that the facility should remain open; and on the other, the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), which commanded the constituency in which it was located, took a more cautious approach to the issue.
By January 19, 1986 when the 108-bed institution closed its doors, citing huge losses and its inability to compete with Government's free health care, the then BLP Government could offer no help.
Minister of Health, Senator O'Brien Trotman, said Government was facing its own constraints.
Parliamentary representative of St. Peter, Owen Arthur, said Government couldn't afford the $15 million price tag but suggested a lease arrangement so certain services could be transferred to the SJH while a $10 million expansion project at the Queen Elizabetth Hospital was underway.
Opposition Senator Evelyn Greaves pressured Government through a 4 000-signature petition urging Prime Minister Bernard St. John not to allow the SJH to close and vowed that a DLP Government would reopen the facility.
Then Minister of Health, Keith Simmons, started the process of acquisition when the DLP won elections that year; his successor Branford Taitt, who was to become a central figure in the ensuing controversy, completed it.
On December 15, 1987 both Government and Opposition agreed to the appropriation of $6 million to buy the property.
The full opening of the SJH was slow as the DLP Government sailed into severe financial weather, retarding efforts.
There were also costly overruns.
Taitt weathered the storm; the SJH opened in a phased manner but was closed again, by the BLP in 1995.
Present Minister of Health, Liz Thompson, said a number of studies showed there was no need for another hospital until 2020.
Taitt regarded it as "a monument to the courageous attitude of the DLP in the face of all kinds of abuse and assault"; while Sir Harold St. John saw it as a "piece of obsolescent rubbish" which Greaves persuaded his colleagues to buy.
In June 1992, then Opposition Leader Henry Forde announced a rare full scale parliamentary investigation into alleged financial "irregularities" at the SJH, targeting Taitt whom they held responsible, as political head of the ministry.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) probed the SJH between June 22, 1992 and April 26, 1993, but its report was never completed due to the unavailability of financial reports of the SJH.
During the 1994 elections campaign in which the BLP was to sweep the Erskine Sandiford DLP Government from power, the BLP steered clear of making any pronouncements on the future of the SJH but Arthur promised that one of the "first issues" of business would be a commission of inquiry into the SJH.
The Commissioners were sworn-in on April 21, 1997.
Taitt saw the PAC probe and its highly publicised interim report as politically oriented.
"A political document for political purposes," he called it, maintaining that he was the target of a wider plot to unseat the DLP.
Political observers of the day suggested that with Sandiford committing political suicide, Taitt was a more formidable opponent. The sharp and quick-witted BLP politicians seized the SJH controversy to taint Taitt so as to dash his chances of succeeding Sandiford.
That left the young, inexperienced David Thompson whom the opponents could easily handle.
Taitt argued that the Auditor General's reports of the past two decades had "a sameness about them which don't relate to the St. Joseph Hospital, but relate to public administration in this country".
Ironically, it is the same argument which today's Government used in light of the recent Auditor General Report which cited financial irregularities particularly in the Ministry of Education.
The defence used by the Government was also the same that Taitt used, that it is not the politician's fault but the public administration system which was in need of overhaul.
Was the SJH just a fracas used for political purposes or was there a serious complaint against the politician?
The Thompson Commission of Enquiry hopefully will set the matter clear in the fullness of time.