Al­most a month af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ap­point­ed six mem­bers of the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of T&T, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is yet to re­sume its op­er­a­tions. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al nurs­ing as­so­ci­a­tions raised the is­sue yes­ter­day dur­ing a hear­ing of a law­suit brought by em­bat­tled for­mer coun­cil pres­i­dent David Mur­phy at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

At­tor­ney Mar­tin George, who is rep­re­sent­ing the as­so­ci­a­tions, in­formed High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad that his clients’ mem­bers were af­fect­ed by the in­ac­tiv­i­ty of the coun­cil as they could not have their cer­tifi­cates ver­i­fied for them to be reg­is­tered. 

Re­spond­ing to George, Mur­phy’s lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen ex­plained that while the coun­cil had a law­ful quo­rum to make de­ci­sions with Deyals­ingh’s ap­point­ments, last month, no meet­ings could be held as one of the ap­pointees was abroad and an­oth­er was hos­pi­talised. 

Ramdeen not­ed that Seep­er­sad’s pre­lim­i­nary or­der in the case, which al­lowed Deyals­ingh to make the ap­point­ments, did not pre­vent the as­so­ci­a­tion from hold­ing elec­tions for the re­main­ing mem­bers of the coun­cil, who could then hold meet­ings with the prop­er quo­rum. 

George sug­gest­ed that his clients could not uni­lat­er­al­ly ap­point mem­bers as the coun­cil would nor­mal­ly fa­cil­i­tate the elec­tions. 

“While we are fid­dling, Rome is burn­ing,” George said. 

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, Seep­er­sad agreed with Ramdeen over the as­so­ci­a­tions’ abil­i­ty to hold their elec­tions. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Elaine Green, who is rep­re­sent­ing the coun­cil, claimed that she was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties with Mur­phy’s law­suit as he was one of the six that was ap­point­ed by Deyals­ingh. 

“It is an ab­sur­di­ty for the claimant to be su­ing the very body which he is now a mem­ber. There must be some­thing wrong with that,” Green said. George agreed with the claim.  

Be­fore ad­journ­ing the case to lat­er this month, Seep­er­sad gave the par­ties dead­lines for the fil­ing of sub­mis­sions on how the case should pro­ceed based on Mur­phy’s cur­rent po­si­tion. 

Mur­phy filed the law­suit in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, af­ter his fel­low coun­cil mem­bers called an 807th or­di­nary meet­ing on Au­gust 26, dur­ing which he was oust­ed and Chris Craig­well was ap­point­ed as in­ter­im pres­i­dent. 

Mur­phy claimed that the Nurs­ing Per­son­nel Act, which es­tab­lished the coun­cil and dic­tates func­tions, does not al­low the coun­cil to take ma­jor de­ci­sions af­ter its term end­ed. 

He al­so al­leged that the leg­is­la­tion does pro­vide for an in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Mur­phy al­so claimed that his fel­low coun­cil mem­bers’ de­ci­sion to pass a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in him was based on the fact that he wrote to Deyals­ingh to com­plain over their in­abil­i­ty to com­plete the out­stand­ing elec­tions of the elect­ed mem­bers of the coun­cil.

Mur­phy, the prin­ci­pal of the School of Nurs­ing at the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal and a Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor, claimed that elec­tions were held af­ter the coun­cil’s term ex­pired but the re­sults have nev­er been re­leased. 

Dur­ing a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing, Seep­er­sad ruled that con­trary to what was claimed by lawyers for the Min­istry of Health, there is no statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion bar­ring Deyals­ingh from ap­point­ing six mem­bers of the coun­cil be­fore the oth­er mem­bers are elect­ed. 

The coun­cil con­sists of 16 mem­bers. Six are se­lect­ed by the Min­is­ter of Health, nine are elect­ed by the over 10,000 mem­bers of the pro­fes­sion and the Chief Nurs­ing Of­fi­cer serves as an ex-of­fi­cio mem­ber. The coun­cil then votes for a pres­i­dent, vice-pres­i­dent, and trea­sur­er from among its ranks. 

Mur­phy is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dayadai Har­ri­paul and Umesh Ma­haraj.