WILLEMSTAD.-According to the Minister of Health, Environment and Nature Suzy Camelia-Römer, everyone knew that the construction costs of the new Hospital would be higher than those that were planned at the beginning. During the press conference of the Council of Ministers, Camelia-Römer said yesterday, that in December 2016, at the request of the Government of Curaçao, a group of experts published a report on the new Otrobanda Hospital project. This was requested by the Minister of Health, Environment and Nature at that time, mr. Sigfried Victorina. The report was prepared by FCW Legal together with a group of experts from Belgium.
Then Minister Sisline Girigoria as Minister of Health, Environment and Nature sent a report on March 18, 2017 to the Parliament of Curaçao. According to Camelia-Römer this means that the report is public since March 2017. “The report says many things. But I want to address some important points. Camelia-Römer explained that at the time the government requested this report, she wrote the term in reference: “I consider that as a government you have the right to know how your money should be invested. Later she said: One of the important remarks of the commission is that in case you have to choose to build the Otrobanda hospital and not on SCADTA-island, which is the land of Amstel before, the biggest difference this would mean is that the hospital will be delivered 3 years later and that the costs of it will be at least 40% higher. The letter of reference is dated October 8, 2012. This is the reference of the report.
Camelia-Römer: “When we see further where the expenses of the Hospital is in that report, by that time there was already talk of an increase of 100 million, which means that once they closed the report, which was already in December 2016, they admitted, having exceeded 100 million guilders, according to the report, the surplus is quite high, since at that time the construction was not even half point. In the report it is stated that the opportunities are immense that in the end the total costs of the construction, would be twice as expensive as what was planned at the beginning “.
