November 5, 2013

Dear Sir

I have a lot of respect for Lovita Foggo. I think she works as hard and conscientiously on behalf of her constituents as any Member of Parliament.

But I have to say I think she is making a mistake over the closure of the Lamb Foggo Urgent Care Centre, which she says is down to another broken One Bermuda Alliance promise, and the failure of OBA MPs from the area to stick up for their constituents.

Actually, the facility was closed by the Bermuda Hospitals Board, not the Government and certainly not the OBA. Area MPs were not consulted about the decision, nor should we have been. As explained by the Board Chairman, the decision was made on the basis of one difficult economic fact — the facility wasn’t able to pay for itself. It was a major drain on the Board’s finances.

If Ms Foggo had visited the Centre, as she says she has done, it must have been obvious to her that it was underutilised. A bored security man was to be seen sitting in one corner of the waiting room, and a receptionist sat at the desk. Neither of them had anything to do for large chunks of the working day. I imagine the same was true of the medical staff in the labs and other parts of the facility. The Board will know accurately how many people used Lamb-Foggo, but my strong impression was that there weren’t enough patients to keep one doctor and a receptionist in a small rented office busy. For what it did, the Lamb-Foggo Centre was an unjustifiably lavish and misconceived idea … another of the PLP’s election-driven extravagances, some might say.

There are many things that it would be nice to have in Bermuda. A branch of Disneyland, perhaps, or an opera house or a movie studio or a fairground with rides for the children. But this is a small community, fallen on hard times. If these things can’t pay for themselves, we just can’t afford them.

And it’s worth reminding Ms Foggo that the hard times we’re experiencing are down to mismanagement by her party. Where was she when the PLP decided to ignore St George’s and spent big amounts of money on Dockyard instead? Where was she when the public was misled over a hotel for St George’s, not just once, but over and over and over again? Where was she when the successful St George’s golf club was demolished and the golf course allowed to become an overgrown eyesore — for no understandable reason? The PLP government didn’t simply ignore the needs of St George’s, they seemed to go out of their way to disadvantage St George’s. It’s no wonder that PLP St George’s MPs were voted out of office at the last election.

Ms Foggo is in no position to be pointing fingers at the OBA, which has inherited the job of cleaning up a mess she helped to create.

Suzann Roberts-Holshouser, JP, MP

Member of Parliament for St George’s West