Bombarded with several issues involving healthcare workers and Customs & Excise Department employees over the past few days, the administration of Prime Minister Allen Chastanet is facing yet another indictment – this time one dealing with the lack of transparency in the financing and procurement of several projects.
While this particular accusation is coming from the opposition Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) — which will most likely be utterly dismissed and not taken seriously at all by the government — it would be prudent of the government to at least clarify some particulars connected with some of its decisions.
For instance government, last month, borrowed upwards of $100 million from the National Insurance Corporation (NIC) so as not to default on two bond payments that it could not service when they became due in July.
Questions swirling about government’s seeming unpreparedness for the maturity of those bonds have not been answered, neither has the NIC seen it fitting to answer question posed to it by this reporter about its loan to government and whether it has purchase bonds. The written questions were requested and submitted several weeks ago, with still no response.
While this layer of borrowing will increase the country’s debt, and the opposition is quoting official reports that show the nation’soverall debt will stand at a whopping $3.5 billion by the end of the year, there is certainly a need for restraint by government where excessive borrowing is concerned.
Then there is the issue of transparency in procuring a management style for the Owen King European Union Hospital.
There is a persistency on the part of the opposition and other government critics that government is going the way of privatization, despite numerous comments on the part of government operatives that this is not the case and claims that government has not signed any agreement with a private Indian-led group from the Cayman Islands that it is in talks with, called Health City Cayman Islands (HCCI).
Yet despite all of this, talk of privatization persists, with government not doing anything to put that to bed once and for all.
What is preventing Prime Minister Chastanet from telling citizens: “My government will not discuss and will never discuss privatization of the OKEU Hospital with the Cayman group, or with any management group that government has decided to go into partnership with in respect of the OKEU Hospital. This talk of privatization is definitely not on the cards and will never be considered by my government.”
A comment like this from the prime minister will certainly end all discussions the opposition or others may have on the hospital’s privatization.
Until then, it appears that privatization is still on the cards of the government, just one of several proposals to choose from.
Norbert Williams, newly appointed as the political attaché to the prime minister, Tuesday said that while there has been nothing definitive about the establishment of a management structure at the OKEU Hospital, there have been many pronouncements on the way forward for the government and consultations are still ongoing.
There is no final answer on how the OKEU Hospital is going to be managed.
Statements like this deepen the fear of some people even more — and reason enough for those who oppose privatization to behave the way they are.
This situation has pushed the Opposition to go as far as stating that ‘the European Union did not give Saint Lucia a hospital to be privatized.’
Chairman of the Labour Party Moses Jn. Baptiste said this at a press conference Tuesday,sparking a question from this reporter who asked him how does he knows that the European Union is against privatization of the hospital: “Well, clearly, there is no document from the EU that states categorically that the hospital was given as a gift and that government should privatize it.”
It is clear therefore that some tense moments in the country over the past few days would never have been if government had the wisdom to make unambiguous statements and include the people in projects that affect them.
Besides, Jn Baptiste also made it clear that a future SLP would reverse any privatization decision this administration undertakes regarding the OKEU Hospital.
