Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nicolls admits that he is yet to pay an outstanding debt to a Canadian medical firm where he sought treatment for leukaemia, and denies that he is in hiding. Sunday Guardian caught up with Mc Nicolls at his Torrib Trace, New Grant, home yesterday morning, as he was about to leave for Torrib Trace Seventh-Day Adventist Church, a few houses away from his home. Holding his Bible, Mc Nicolls, 54, said to reporters outside his gate: "Look, I am on my way to church now." A worn-out-looking Mc Nicolls was very upset by an article carried on the front page of a daily newspaper yesterday, that the Osler Health Centre in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, had called the newsroom claiming they were unable to locate him to settle an outstanding debt.
"They called you guys? Ridiculous!" he said. Denying that he was in hiding, Mc Nicolls said the State had agreed to pay his bill. "The judiciary agreed to pay. I thought they had made out the cheque payable to the hospital, but they made it out in my name. "I had to come back to get a draft to send to them." Mc Nicolls did not say when exactly the draft would be sent. "I am in the process of doing that," he added. Furious that the newspaper did not contact him before the article was published, he asked: "I will run from Canada for a few thousand dollars?
"Am I not free to travel home between treatments?" Mc Nicolls, who has been on sick leave since mid-December, after being diagnosed with chronic lymphocyte leukaemia, appeared to have lost weight and looks frail. Asked about his health, he smiled. "I am fighting. God is God." According to the newspaper article, Mc Nicolls' outstanding debt was for a specialised drug, Rituximab, which he received last month. The debt is said to be Can$23,988.19 ($141,050.55 TT).
