AmbulanceGate in Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
THE Tobago Regional Health Authority (TRHA) has launched an investigation into the procurement of a number of ambulances for Tobago people.
Contacted for comment yesterday, the TRHA confirmed it has launched a probe. The ambulances were procured for use by the TRHA and the Division of Health. The probe comes as a result of some ambulances en route to the Roxborough Hospital stalling with patients aboard; this caused the procurement process to be called into question.
Tobago House of Assembly minority leader Kelvon Morris has labelled the issue “AmbulanceGate”, claiming it was a brazen scandal, financial recklessness, administrative deception, and possible criminal misconduct demanding urgent investigation. He called it the “greatest procurement betrayal” of Tobago people. He also called on the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Health Secretary Dr Faith Brebnor to resign.
“I am calling for the immediate resignation of the Secretary of Health on this matter where $12 million in cost overruns procuring ambulances after two years. We are in 2025…contract awarded in 2023 and up to now we cannot see in rotation one of those ambulances; and the one that they attempted to put into rotation could not even power up a hill,” Morris said yesterday during a news conference in Scarborough.
In 2023, the TRHA awarded a contract for the supply and delivery of ambulances under Tender No PMT01-2022. The contract was awarded to Biomedical Technologies Limited for over $5,535,000. The procurement was for a specific type of ambulance—reportedly Isuzu models—known to be reliable and fit for Tobago’s terrain.
Despite the award being made in July 2023, the first batch of ambulances was not delivered until October 2024, some 15 months later.
The final cost ballooned to over $16 million, with delivery and associated costs escalating the total to more than $17 million.
Morris has since written to the Anti-Corruption Investigations Bureau about the matter. “So, on this matter, based on some evidence I have of impropriety and malfeasance, I have penned a letter to the Anti-Corruption Investigations Bureau and I have also copied our acting Commissioner of Police Junior Benjamin requesting a criminal investigation into the TRHA ambulance procurement scandal dubbed AmbulanceGate,” he said.
Morris said millions have been paid to the supplier, yet operating standards are not at optimum in Tobago.
During the 37th Sitting of the Assembly on January 23, Brebnor said the supplier was paid a total of $8.035 million to date and this represented approximately 50% of the total cost of $16.605 million for the 12 units that were ordered.
“Yet, we have paid already and perhaps we have paid more since that time…$8 million of the $16.65 million, and the question we all have to ask ourselves is: why, after millions were sent to the supplier for ambulances for the TRHA, when the ambulances arrived they had to be returned to be retrofitted, costing taxpayers even more monies?
“The ambulances that came into the country were not fit for purpose. It meant that the supplier had to go and do further adjustments; and in doing the further adjustments, that cost you, the taxpayer, further expenditure. So, whereas the ambulance was originally $1.295 million, they had to make further adjustments [so] that you had an additional $244,000,” Brebnor said then.
Contacted yesterday for comment, the TRHA’s communications unit responded saying, “The matter is currently under investigation and, as such, the Secretary has no comment at this time.”
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