THE South East Regional Hospital’s (SERH) Community Open Day had a packed pavilion during the opening ceremony.
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On Friday, the public was invited to attend the SERH site to look at the progress that has been made to the new hospital.
Eight lucky people and their friends were given an internal tour of the building, and everyone else stood on the hill outside to admire the construction.
The Governor of NSW, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (retired) and his wife Linda attended the opening ceremony before being given a tour of the SERH site.
Also at the ceremony were NSW Treasurer and Member for Bega Andrew Constance, and Member for Eden-Monaro Peter Hendy.
Speaking at the ceremony, Health Infrastructure CEO Sam Sangster said with the number of workers SERH construction had brought to the town the whole region was feeling the “economic uplift”.
He said work at the site was progressing very well.
“We are a little bit ahead, which is a good thing, and treasurer – we’re on budget too,” Mr Sangster said when addressing Mr Constance.
Brookfield Multiplex construction manager Daniel Murphy gave some statistics of the construction, including how so far 400,000 man hours had been spent on the site, six Olympic swimming pool sizes of cement had been poured, and by the time of completion 500km of electric cabling will have been laid.
He said 45 per cent of the labour had been sourced from the local area, and Brookfield Multiplex had also put on 20 Indigenous trainees.
Mr Constance said the cost of the $187million construction equated to the costs of running it over a three year period, and that it would service the area from Mallacoota to Batemans Bay.
“It will be one of the most important facilities in the region,” he said.
Dr Hendy said SERH was the single biggest infrastructure project in the Eden-Monaro and was a boon to the Bega Valley region of Australia.
“It’s a fantastic addition to the services of the people of the Bega Valley,” he said.
“It means people won’t have to go to Canberra if they don’t want to.
“This is a new facility and we should be very proud of it.”
In federal news, Dr Hendy said Health Minister Sussan Ley had “promised” him she would visit the Bega Valley to talk to the community about health issues, and the government was not interested in issues that do not have the support of the medical profession.
“We’re not proceeding with proposals that do not have the backing of the medical profession,” he said.
