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Hanover Health Department orders pop-up rehabilitation centre closed

Published:Wednesday | February 3, 2021 | 12:17 AMBryan Miller/Gleaner Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

The Hanover Health Department (HHD) has ordered the Chances Rehabilitation Centre, which was recently set up in Chigwell and Rejoin districts in eastern Hanover without the requisite authorisation, closed with immediate effect.

The closure notice was issued on the facility last Friday by a team from the HHD, led by Patricia Hall-Patterson, chief public health inspector for Hanover. The action was taken as a result of the failure of the operators to bring the facility up to health and safety standards.

BELOW ACCEPTABLE STANDARD

Ever since the opening of the centre that was originally located in Montego Bay, its founder/administrator, Natalie Reid, has been under close scrutiny by the HHD, which had found the condition at the centre to be below an acceptable standard when they made their initial visit there to see what was happening.

The centre is home to 41 mentally challenged persons in rented houses – one in Rejoin district, and two in Chigwell district. Prior to last Friday’s closure notice, one of the rented houses in Chigwell was ordered closed by the HHD in December 2020 because of the unhealthy conditions there.

Since Chances Rehabilitation Centre was established, the facility has been visited by representatives from the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, Inspector of Poor, the Jamaica Fire Brigade, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and councillors and other officials from the Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC). All the groups had expressed concerns about the conditions there.

Following a meeting with the HMC and representatives from all the named departments on Wednesday, December 16, Reid was given two weeks to address a number of concerns at the centre or face closure.

The two weeks to carry out the repairs expired on December 31, and although getting an additional three weeks when the HHD visited the facility on Friday, they discovered that nothing had been done to address the concerns they had raised.

“A closure notice has been issued since our visit on Friday,” one health official told The Gleaner on Monday. “They had asked for an extra week, but we are not confident that anything will be done, so the notice was issued and it is for them to move (vacate) now.”

The facility was previously described as “a disaster that is waiting to happen” by Neika Edram, the inspector of poor for Hanover, when she visited the centre in December 2020.

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