A critical turning point has emerged in the ongoing scrutiny of the chief executive officer recruitment process at Jamaica’s University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), with newly unearthed official records confirming the core claims made by former board chairman Wayne Chai Chong, bolstering his public credibility this Tuesday.
The fresh set of documents, submitted to Jamaica’s Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), upends the narrative presented just two weeks prior. During that earlier session, committee members were informed that institutional officials could only locate two short paragraphs of documentation related to the 2023 recruitment effort, tucked away in a July 2023 board meeting minute entry. That lack of paper trail triggered sharp skepticism from lawmakers, who questioned how a high-stakes senior leadership hiring could leave so little formal evidence.
Chai Chong first testified before the committee back in May, where he consistently maintained that the UHWI board had carried out a full, formal recruitment process before settling on a preferred candidate for the top executive role. His account was called into question earlier this month, however, when acting UHWI CEO Eric Hosin told the PAC on June 2 that institutional staff could not find any records proving the board had formally approved, rejected, or altered the candidate selection. That testimony left lawmakers deeply concerned about potential procedural gaps.
Tuesday’s document submission completely reshapes the conversation. PAC Chairman Julian Robinson read a research department summary of the newly found records into the official parliamentary record, revealing the materials include full board correspondence, formal meeting minutes, and a complete recruitment report prepared by Great People Solutions, the external consultant hired to lead the hiring effort.
Per the summary, the UHWI board first authorized the CEO recruitment process back on December 14, 2022, when it voted to task its joint human resource and customer service subcommittee with leading the search. The board then moved to contract Great People Solutions to manage the candidate search and deliver a shortlist of recommendations to the panel.
The documents show that by August 2023, the search process had produced a clear top candidate. To move forward with contract negotiations, directors held a formal round-robin vote to ratify the subcommittee’s recommendation. Records also confirm that while some board members raised questions about the timeline of the process and the level of scrutiny applied to candidates, those concerns were fully discussed and resolved before the vote, with a majority of directors supporting the move to begin negotiations.
Robinson’s reading also included a key note that the human resource subcommittee intentionally structured the entire process to align with Jamaican government procurement and hiring protocols, ensuring all steps were properly documented to withstand external audit and public scrutiny.
Beyond the recruitment itself, the consultant’s report also included broader institutional recommendations, including addressing what Great People Solutions described as an organizational culture of non-compliance with protocols, overhauling the CEO’s official job description, reducing the broad scope of responsibilities attached to the role, and implementing a more market-aligned compensation framework for senior leadership.
After reviewing the newly submitted records, opposition MP Peter Bunting, who represents Manchester Southern, told the committee the materials create a starkly different impression from the previous hearing. “A quick scan of it paints a completely different picture from what we were led to believe at the last meeting, like the chairman was on a frolic of his own, and that what he had presented to the committee meeting before was not accurate,” Bunting explained. He also raised questions about why such a large volume of official records was missed during the initial search for recruitment-related documents, when the committee first requested the materials.
PAC Chairman Julian Robinson echoed those questions, while also noting that the newly discovered records align perfectly with the testimony Chai Chong gave during his earlier appearance. Robinson concluded that the documents leave no room for doubt about the accuracy of Chai Chong’s account. “There’s no question that a detailed process was followed by the board at the time in dealing with the recruitment of a then CEO of the institution,” Robinson said. “I think it is important for the record of the meeting — and certainly I know for the former chairman — that this be placed on the record so that there is no question about the accuracy of his representation to the committee when he was here. I think this fully supports his testimony here before the committee.”