The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Perry Christie yesterday said Canadian industrial specialists have examined the Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield Centre, which houses his office and the Ministry of Finance, for mould.

Those experts, he said, have assured officials there is nothing harmful to the scores of civil servants working in the building.

Mr Christie, however,  has advised staff at the Office of the Prime Minister to go home if they are greatly concerned about their health. He said they can return to their duties when the matter has been completed. 

Last week, about 30 employees — after two of them experienced breathing difficulties — walked off the job to protest the working conditions at the Centre.

“We have people at Environmental Health,” he said, “who are specialists in industrial hygiene and they gave us the assurance that there is nothing harmful to the people on the face of it. I brought out a WTO certified industrial hygienist from a firm in Canada. They came in and they have examined this building and other buildings.

“As we speak, we have a contorting firm in the building who I am told put up a sign today that they (employees) are locked off from a particular area and they are removing whatever could be remotely harmful to people.

“You can’t control fear or however unreasonable or irrational the fear is. It is fear and we have to deal with it. So I said to the Minister of State for Finance, if people are concerned about the proximity for where this is taking place, let them go home and come back when it is complete.”

The Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield Centre on West Bay Street was acquired under the former Ingraham administration to relocate the old Office of the Prime Minister on Cable Beach in 2012.

It was the former SG Hambrose building which the government bought for  $13 million.

The previous building was sold for around $17 million.