 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to support the motion that is before this House. The boring of this very important amount for the completion of the St. Jude Hospital and the restoration of the George Odlam Stadium. But Mr. Speaker, I just want to establish the context in which I will make my brief contribution. Mr. Speaker, the 9th of September was the date of the fire. And the 9th of September happens to be Josima's my son's birthday. So there is a connection for me personally when I speak of the 9th of September. And while I was in Martinick on the weekend speaking about seeing about my health on the 9th of September, while grieving my son, I realized that we were also reflecting on that great day when on that sad day when we lost a very important facility in the south of the island. Mr. Speaker, there's another reason why I rise to speak on this issue. Mr. Speaker, there are many subjects or themes that go through this Parliament. There are legal themes. Of course, a lot of the discussions surrounding the debate in Parliament. And I'm not a lawyer. There are economic themes. I'm not a student of economy. I pride and I love the area of social development, but I've studied at both the first level of a degree and master's level as a quantity surveyor. And whether it was, and one of the things, Mr. Speaker, that always, you know, challenged me is that I was trained by a West African in Jamaica, a quantity surveyor at the highest level, who said that when you are preparing a payment certificate, if it is for your enemy, forget your emotions and prepare a payment certificate as accurate as it should be. And Mr. Bochi, my then lecturer at CAST, then the University of Technology, really impacted my life, my professional life in dealing with the issues of construction. Mr. Speaker, when we won the election, even before we won the election, while being in opposition, I was the leader of the opposition representing the Prime Minister then. I continued asking the question in the Senate, sorry. I continue asking the question to the then government on the reports associated with St. Jude, because clearly for me, as a professional, there was something missing in the discussion. Mr. Speaker, for anybody who is a professional, it would have been obvious it would have been as daylight what was wrong about St. Jude. Mr. Speaker, any serious government, any government who is up to the game would not aim back on this continued project as complicated as a hospital after you, after they have assumed office. To do the following, demobilize an established contractor to get rid and store materials that you no longer have in use, that has been paid for. To lose supply arrangements where suppliers are now gonna drift, you don't even know where they were. Fire the managers of the project, you'll lose institutional memory. To do all of that, why would you do this? Even when in private contract where some contractor is building a home and there are issues, they go through arbitration to resolve the issues than to abandon totally the procurement arrangement that has been put in place to supply a particular project. Mr. Speaker, millions of dollars at stake and of course the minister of finance gave an account where somebody had to tell him, sir I am holding $1.8 million for you and had the person not made that statement, he would know nothing about it. And I asked myself how many more persons like him have come forward to state that they are holding in trust because there were many deposits made on account and there were many suppliers, subcontractors suppliers who probably know nothing of. Why would a government just get rid of the entire project management team with institutional memory and have bought a project at this stage? Why? So Mr. Speaker, I used the opportunity and I decided to go into details and I paid attention over the years to some of the statements made by the then minister. Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that based on a little of what I've seen, of what I've heard, the former government had very little consideration for any procurement strategy. There was very little appreciation for a procurement approach to learn anything that they intended. They were operating in the dark and somebody else was speaking to the government and not anybody who had command of the program or what they wanted to give to Senbusha. So for example, Mr. Speaker, let's start by saying that you need a house because you're going to get married and you want to move in within six months. Of course your procurement approach would have reflected that. You will probably go into an arrangement where the designer, you go into a bolt arrangement where you have a fast-track arrangement but why would you have bought an ongoing project and decide to build a regular frame? I do not want, I will call it a box because the box is an appropriate term and the first time I heard the box was at school because it is the cheapest form of arrangement when you're building a building based on the fact that it is a regular frame. Now some people take offense to the box but the box is a right term to use in the context of the type of construction but in the in the more technical term they would say a regular frame meaning that it's rectangular. That's what it means. It is the fastest and should be the most economical form of construction. You can move fast. But Mr. Speaker, somebody said that they could land a hospital in St. Lucia within a short time frame and the politicians then the government believed it and they communicated it to the public and Mr. Speaker, they failed. They were so convinced that they would have delivered the hospital within that time frame. They said eat it, don't. Please do not vote us back in. To make such a statement if you are not a professional it's because somebody convinces you that you can be that it can be delivered. Mr. Speaker based on what I've studied it is believed that the fastest form of construction is a regular frame a box. As a matter of fact most of the the the claddings are already on the market you can purchase them and it is easy to retrofit. But Mr. Speaker, I can tell you on that day I visited as a senator the St. Jude site. Everything was there to see as a major error. I asked the engineer on the site but is it a single-story building? He said no it's a two-story. I said how could it be a two-story because you cast the first floor but there's no ground floor. Ah he explained. If you're building a two-story building with a ground floor and a first floor why is it you cast the first floor and the concrete roof but there's no ground floor. He said so we have not received approval for the drawings for the services. So there were no approval of the building while it was being constructed. That is not a lie the engineer on site said that. I don't know why the minister is trying to the the former prime minister is trying to make a case and then the engineer knowing that I am a quantity surveyor he said Mr. Henry I'm just looking here. I said but that's crazy the mechanical drawings for the plumbing for the electricals for waste disposal and when I discuss with him waste disposal because one of the most challenging areas of a hospital is the disposal of waste. Waste from surgery. Blood. The gouges. Where do you dispose of it? How do you get that into the special arrangement to get it down into those treatment plan? That was not considered when the first floor in the roof was built. They were at the ministry still working on the drawings. Mr. Speaker there wasn't one conduit in the building at the time not one piece of conduit to pass electrical wires not to run pipes for drainage. Somebody told the government then that look here you can build a hospital within that time frame and they decided to bring back on this. Mr. Speaker the government that I'm part of we do not subscribe to any of this. As a matter of fact the prime minister I'm a quantity surveyor in the in the cabinet I do not speak in the cabinet as a quantity surveyor. I speak as a parliamentarian. I speak as an officer in cabinet and he subscribed himself to professionals outside to guide him and I'm happy that the prime minister use professionals to advise on the way forward. I had my bias from day one. As a professional I was influenced that we should not continue this regular frame structure it will not see the delight. It won't see the light of day. As a matter of fact Mr. Speaker when I entered the building I laughed because it was the first time in my life I saw the quantity of drywall stored in any one place. Mr. Speaker this place would have been the home of drywall because if you look at what is what you see on television aluminum frames to serve as the studs and to put drywall partition and to set up rooms throughout the entire hospital. That is what was there but there was also a major problem. I brought to the attention he agreed with me. The concrete roof didn't have the membrane and I'm happy you could see that the former prime minister was told something. The membrane the membrane might be asphalt they usually put on a concrete roof you put asphalt or what you call tar. You put some pebbles and you put some some some membrane on top of it to be the roof. This is the most troubling thing in a tropical country. Up to now we cannot resolve the waterfront buildings and leaks. When it's hot the membrane melt below it melts the asphalt and you have leaks and you cannot determine whether leaks are sometimes you have to rip off everything and do it over. The irisomans school I worked on up to now we have issues with it there are so many buildings in the region with concrete roof we have not resolved. We believe that it's a safer way. We believe that we're preparing a platform for helicopter to learn but a major problem as it relates to the cages. Then I saw little holes on top of the roof I asked him was that he said this is how we drain rainwater. I said so these holes are too small two leaves will block it off. This was he said well we need to have a certain strength of the roof to withstand when the helicopter land. I said but you have patience on below. This is not how laminar is designed. That was not approved by planning. I didn't join politics to do a TMT but if I sit as a quantity surveyor in a cabinet room in parliament and say nothing I believe I would be doing a disservice to send lotions because they gave me a scholarship to go to school. Mr. Speaker I believe today what you heard from the from the former prime minister is misleading. As a matter of fact while in opposition I asked for the report the very report that was hidden for five years five years and the report that they invested one million dollars into. I tried to hold my breath on it but most times I asked why did they pay for the report when all I saw was the draft report after 12 weeks you supposed to receive the final report and then pay but why did they pay for the draft report without receiving the final report after consultancy. I do not know if there is a final report but if there is up to now we have not seen the final report because what we are making reference to is the draft report but the draft report when we came to the to the to the parliament as a senator to make a document of the house again they resisted why then but the report said something that's very interesting. The member of the castries office you are aware of the motion before us. Absolutely Mr. Speaker. I am trusting at some point your contribution would at least collide. Mr. Speaker I'm heading there I'm about to land on that borrowing. I'm about to land on the borrowing. That's small the small one I went to Matt McCormick. Yes Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker the issue of this building and everything that we encountered and the discussion that led to where we are today is that the building was unsuitable. The corridors were narrow and they aborted this project wasted money and today this government must find the resources to complete it but more importantly Mr. Speaker one would ask where's the justification for the resources borrowing one of course the Minister of Finance of course alluded to it about the fact that we're getting some in very encouraging terms of borrowing 2% five years grace but Mr. Speaker it's important the five years grace because most times when we speak of buildings we speak of just the capital outlet to establish the building but we do not speak of the life cost of the building the life of the building and when someone gives you five years grace what it means that within that building that you've loaned for you now have you are owning that building for five years without paying a cent for it. Mr. Speaker the building that was abandoned for three years could have been completed for far more for less had this had the previous administration not abandoned the building and allow bats, rodents, bush to take over and nature have a way once you if you go on holidays too long and you leave your home in Carp estate the trees will not stay away the plants will invite themselves that's the nature of that's how nature operates so they abandoned the building and when I visited the building the bats the trees and everything had actually taken over but not only that Mr. Speaker materials based on Shanta Kings report in excess of over 40 million 40 million dollars the procurement arrangement was in place. Why do you abandon a supply arrangement on a project as complicated like this Mr. Speaker? Mr. Speaker when you prepare in a procurement plan for a project like that very complicated is how you're going to get the equipment and specialized arrangement for a hospital these things are not available at Johnson's and Johnson's they're not available at the at the warehouses and business places in castries these are specialized equipment the tiles must be non-static you do not get them in the the ceramic and porcelain tiles in the warehouse or there you must make special arrangement to get them you had all of this they must be stored at certain temperatures they were stored you went into the place where they were stored you read them up as if the person was robbing us and up to now we do not know what has happened to them I do not know and then you're going to start a new building Mr. Speaker that makes no sense I am happy that this government has a different approach and I believe that the prime minister and the cabinet of ministers one of the things I recognize about them it looked like they sing in more of Bujuban than song action not a bag of mouth you understand we are not in for the long-term it's action we are about so our approach to St. Jude Hospital was basically what's the problem and what must we do about it and therefore while they were matching and promoting and doing all the demonstration work had started on St. Jude long work involved the assessment one of the things that we also did was whatever materials that were left there to do a suitability fit for purpose assessment because we know that these materials because they are dead doesn't mean that they are suitable because you have to do fit for purpose assessment these materials had to be stored under certain conditions they were not the persons were responsible paid no attention to this they went and they took materials and they put them in containers they store them under any condition and it right now have no value we cannot use them and that is why the amount that we have to spend today is a lot more Mr. Speaker on buildings like a hospital you would find that the cost of materials is far higher than the amount you spend in labor and if you have 30 million dollars of material store it means that with approximately 20 million you can create value of over 70 million dollars so when it is said that we need 70 million or 80 million dollars to complete the hospital the amount of materials there and the materials added to it and the profit and preliminaries would bring it up to 80 million that is significant in the discussion but when you lose 40 million dollars of material of course it means that you now need to get 80 million dollars to complete the hospital that's what it means in quantitative terms because material cost is only a fraction of the total cost also significant for us to understand is mobilization Mr. Speaker in mobilization when a gentleman has he's taken a low-boy and he put his excavator his excavator machine on it and he takes it to a site and he charges you two thousand dollars once the equipment is there he can now excavate for you at 120 a day you do not have to pay for the mobilization of the equipment when a contractor is already mobilized at the cost of over half a million dollars and you stop him it means that a contractor you're bringing in at this time you now need to spend another half a million dollars to mobilize him on a project with all which was already on trade you do not change the rider of a horse in the middle of a race and I thought this former government was so much expertise in horses would have known that you understand I would have known that what they did they changed the rider of the horse and actually start all over Mr. Speaker I will keep this brief because I suspect there'll be another time when we need to go into further details for St. Jude Hospital but I would tell you I am happy that our government spent no time to talk much but his action not a bag of mouth thank you very much Mr. Speaker