An­na-Lisa Paul

One week af­ter it was an­nounced that the med­ical in­tern who lied about be­ing robbed at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) had been fired, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says she will be giv­en a chance to sal­vage her ca­reer.

How­ev­er, be­fore this can be done, the young woman will have to sat­is­fy cer­tain con­di­tions laid down by the em­ploy­er.

, Deyals­ingh said, "While she is no longer em­ployed by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA), she has been giv­en six months to pro­duce doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence that she is fit and prop­er to re­sume du­ties."

Deyals­ingh stressed the de­ci­sion was based on hu­mane con­sid­er­a­tions.

He went on to ex­plain, "We are not throw­ing away this young in­di­vid­ual be­cause the coun­try has in­vest­ed mil­lions via Gate and train­ing to bring this in­tern up to the lev­el that she is.

," the min­is­ter said.

The woman claimed that on Oc­to­ber 23 she had been robbed on the com­pound of the PoS­GH.

This prompt­ed her col­leagues at the fa­cil­i­ty to em­bark on in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by with­hold­ing ser­vices in the light of gen­er­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Deyals­ingh ad­mit­ted there were gen­er­al safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues which need­ed to be ad­dressed.

Fo­cus­ing on this, Deyals­ingh said while the ball had been firm­ly placed in the hands of the NWRHA's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Shel­don Cyrus, he ad­mit­ted to en­gag­ing in some un­ortho­dox be­hav­iour in or­der to high­light the in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems at both the PoS­GH and the St James In­fir­mary.

, in or­der to get a first-hand view of the short­com­ings in the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem.

He was "ap­palled at what pass­es for se­cu­ri­ty." Deyals­ingh said, "In one row of lights, there were sev­en blown bulbs."

Stress­ing that it was a sim­ple se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure to en­sure they were changed in a time­ly man­ner, Deyals­ingh said he had al­so spo­ken to nurs­es who claimed to have lost their car bat­ter­ies while their ve­hi­cles were parked on the com­pound.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter ex­pressed out­rage over what he deemed a se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty breach at the Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency De­part­ment (A&E).

Re­call­ing the jail-break of last year Ju­ly which left one po­lice­man dead, Deyals­ingh said the PoS­GH had been a fo­cal point at the time.

Ex­pect­ing that last year's events would have en­cour­aged hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials to tight­en se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, Deyals­ingh said he was sur­prised to find the elec­tron­ic gate at the A&E ajar when he en­tered the de­part­ment.

He said the se­cu­ri­ty guard at the time had been min­gling with mem­bers of the pub­lic, leav­ing his post un­manned.

Claim­ing this was an even greater risk to pa­tients and staff, the min­is­ter said it would have been easy for him, in the role of a ban­dit, to pen­e­trate deep in­to the de­part­ment and com­mit a crime.