Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Dr Fuad Khan says he is a vic­tim of dis­crim­i­na­tion, and he be­lieves "that racism may have had a part to play." Khan claimed he was by­passed for a se­nior con­sul­tan­cy po­si­tion last year for "a less ex­pe­ri­enced Niger­ian doc­tor" who was work­ing un­der a se­nior urol­o­gist.

He said that se­nior urol­o­gist and an­oth­er East In­di­an doc­tor "were forced out of the hos­pi­tal." In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Khan said the post of con­sul­tant urol­o­gist was ad­ver­tised by the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) around Au­gust, last year, and that he had ap­plied. How­ev­er, af­ter be­ing in­ter­viewed by the pan­el, he said: "I nev­er heard any­thing af­ter."

Khan, who has been a se­nior con­sul­tant urol­o­gist for the last 16 years, said he met the re­quire­ments for the po­si­tion, un­like the Niger­ian sur­geon, whose post-grad­u­ate de­gree was not in urol­o­gy. He claimed that sev­er­al doc­tors and mem­bers of staff at the hos­pi­tal al­so in­formed him that eth­nic cleans­ing was oc­cur­ring in the med­ical field.

Khan said he was the one who had in­formed Op­po­si­tion MP, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, of the is­sue of racism at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, and had asked him to raise the mat­ter be­fore Par­lia­ment. Dr Gopeesingh did so on Fri­day, and Prime Min­ster Patrick Man­ning and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­spond­ed to Gopeesingh's com­ment, say­ing his state­ments were ir­re­spon­si­ble and could pro­voke racial ha­tred. Khan said, how­ev­er:

"They know ex­act­ly what they are do­ing, and it has stung them on their faces.

"There seems to be an at­tempt to frus­trate the hir­ing of lo­cal doc­tors, so that they can con­trol the for­eign doc­tors who are on con­tract. "They are now mak­ing sure that they put us out of the sys­tem." He called on the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to cease the racial at­tack on East In­di­ans in the coun­try. "I want the PNM to stop prac­tis­ing racism to­wards In­di­ans. "I am re­al­ly se­ri­ous...I have been push­ing for equal­i­ty in this coun­try, not on­ly for In­di­ans, but for all races."

Spe­cial­ists leav­ing

Khan al­so claimed that gy­nae­col­o­gists, opthal­mol­o­gists and anaethe­sists have left. He even said one of the se­nior urol­o­gists was forced out with­out com­pen­sato­ry leave. Re­fer­ring to the late Rosa Parks, who fought for the rights of blacks in the US, Khan said Gopeesingh was fight­ing for the rights of East In­di­ans.

"Dr Tim is like Rosa Parks. He has be­gun a civ­il rights move­ment for equal­i­ty of In­di­an peo­ple in T&T." Khan al­so said he "found out" that the schol­ar­ships of­fered to na­tion­als to pur­sue med­i­cine in Grena­da were "giv­en to 90 per cent of Africans and ten per cent to East In­di­ans." Apart from ed­u­ca­tion, he said the in­take in the Pub­lic Ser­vice and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of hous­es by the gov­ern­ment were all part of the eth­nic cleans­ing.

He is call­ing for a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the NCRHA, and said he had ap­plied for doc­u­ments from the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, through his at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan. "I am back­ing Dr Gopeesingh 100 per cent, be­cause of what hap­pened to me." He said ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 4 of the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion, no na­tion­al should be treat­ed un­fair­ly by a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty or body. "If I have to seek ju­di­cial re­view, I will do that." Ef­forts to reach Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace proved fu­tile.

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