THE Board of Directors of the Linden Hospital Complex (LHC), reconstituted less than a year ago, continues to be dubbed illegal, and directors are calling for this to be corrected by Public Health Minister Dr. George Norton.

Board Director Maurice Butters recently told this publication that pertinent issues involving the Complex and including the Mackenzie Hospital, Wismar Hospital and Kwakwani Hospital are being compromised because of the board’s illegality.

Alluding to a decision made by Board Chairman Mortimer Mingo — to recommend to Permanent Secretary Trevor Thomas of the Public Health Ministry that a junior doctor be appointed CEO of the hospital — Butters said the Board was not privy to this recommendation. However, without the Board’s involvement, such a process cannot even be deemed wrong, because of the Board’s illegal standing.

“The legality of that hospital is what is dangling over people’s heads; and unless we can have that sorted out, we are going to continue to have issues that will be negative to the provision of services to the people of Region 10,” Butters said.

Butters was at the time alluding to what he claims to be autocratic management by the Chairman, whom he has accused of wanting to unilaterally manage the hospital.

Butters reiterated that the board’s illegal standing has resulted in its inability to enact policies and terminate contracts. What is more troubling, according to Butters, is that a minister within the cabinet, Minister Valarie Patterson, is the Vice Chairman of the Board; and in his opinion, she does not make adequate representation at Cabinet level to get approval for the Board to be legalized.

The matter was raised at a public consultation held with Junior Minister of Health, Dr. Karen Cummings, who heard that the reconstituted board has not been correctly installed and is, as such, illegal. Butters revealed that during a visit to the hospital, Minister Norton also dubbed the Board illegal.

“There is no instrument to create that Board, and they promised to have it done; and since then to now, nothing has happened…it was not published in the (Official) Gazette either. What has happened is that the Service Agreement which was signed by the Linden Hospital Complex and the Ministry of (Public) Health talks about a ‘Board’, and that is how the word ‘Board’ came in to operation; but it is a management committee, not a board, since 1996 to two years ago,” Butters contended.

If draft legislation had, in the past, been prepared by the LHC Management Committee to corporatize the medical institution, then a Board would have been established based on that; however, this was not done.

Minister Cummings, in hearing these declarations, has promised to prioritize action to change the status of the management committee. However, six months after, the situation remains the same, and Butters claims that this is affecting progress at the hospital.