Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Four months af­ter Dr Rod­ney Ram­roop was ap­point­ed to act as CEO of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), he has called it quits.Sources told the T&T Guardian Ram­roop called it a day on Mon­day and re­signed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.Con­firm­ing his res­ig­na­tion, Ram­roop said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day: "It was dif­fi­cult for me to con­tin­ue as CEO of the NCRHA, so I de­cid­ed to step down. I can­not say any more at this time."

For­mer act­ing chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer (COO) Ku­mar Mo­hammed is now act­ing in the po­si­tion. Mo­hammed is a for­mer act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty and was re­cent­ly trans­ferred to the NCRHA. The po­si­tion of COO re­mains va­cant.Sources told T&T Guardian that Ram­roop, who was on pre-re­tire­ment leave, was spe­cial­ly re­called to act as CEO af­ter be­ing rec­om­mend­ed by min­istry of­fi­cials.

Ram­roop, who for­mer­ly held the post of med­ical di­rec­tor, was on­ly ap­point­ed in Feb­ru­ary to re­place act­ing CEO Col­in Bisses­sar, who was sent on leave on Feb­ru­ary 18 by chair­man She­henaz Mo­hammed be­cause he had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed more than 100 days.The T&T Guardian learned se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers searched a van owned by the au­thor­i­ty and used by Bisses­sar be­fore he left the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

A di­rec­tive was al­so giv­en to seize all the shred­ders in the of­fices of ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment in Build­ing 39 where he was based.The move, T&T Guardian learned, did not come as a sur­prise, as ten­sions had been brew­ing be­tween Bisses­sar and Mo­hammed since she was ap­point­ed.Bisses­sar and Mo­hammed butted heads on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions when she act­ed as the pres­i­dent of the Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion (MPATT).

Among them was an in­ci­dent in Feb­ru­ary last year when Mo­hammed wrote to for­mer chair­man Dr Ashvin Shar­ma con­demn­ing Bisses­sar's han­dling of mat­ters. Mo­hammed said de­spite nu­mer­ous at­tempts to meet with him to dis­cuss mat­ters in­volv­ing three of its mem­bers, the as­so­ci­a­tion had been re­peat­ed­ly blanked.Bisses­sar, who is al­so the au­thor­i­ty's com­plex ad­min­is­tra­tor, is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to work in the next two weeks.

Sources told the T&T Guardian that Ram­roop's de­ci­sion to throw in the tow­el fol­lowed a meet­ing on Mon­day with Mo­hammed and oth­er mem­bers of staff.The meet­ing be­came heat­ed and sev­er­al doc­u­ments were flung at Ram­roop, to­geth­er with de­mands for an ex­pla­na­tion of some of his de­ci­sions. Ram­roop, sources said, walked out of the meet­ing and lat­er re­signed.Mo­hammed and Ram­roop, sources said, had not be­ing see­ing eye to eye since his ap­point­ment.

A se­nior of­fi­cial said: "The health min­is­ter needs to get in­volved. What is tak­ing place at the NCRHA is in­tol­er­a­ble. Staff are be­ing mi­cro­man­aged and de­mands are be­ing made (like those) of an ex­ec­u­tive chair­man."Every day is a dif­fer­ent set of rules. We can­not con­tin­ue like this. What is hap­pen­ing is that if a memo is sent out by the CEO, hours af­ter, a sec­ond one is be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed with dif­fer­ent in­struc­tions."We are con­fused and we need the min­is­ter to in­ter­vene."

The T&T Guardian learned Mo­hammed was se­lect­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and was not the choice of Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan. How­ev­er, sources said, Khan gave a com­mit­ment to work with Mo­hammed, in the in­ter­est of up­grad­ing health care at the hos­pi­tal.

Health Min­is­ter com­ments

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Khan said Ram­roop was "un­hap­py" and had re­signed as a re­sult.Asked what was to be blamed for Ram­roop's un­hap­pi­ness, Khan said: "He was do­ing a very good job. He even rolled out the cen­tral ster­ile sup­ply de­part­ment project with NCRHA hos­pi­tal man­ag­er Ameena Ali. He was get­ting sev­er­al projects off the ground."But he re­signed and I ac­cept­ed his res­ig­na­tion. He told me some things which I do not wish to dis­close at this time."

On mi­cro­man­age­ment at the NCRHA, Khan said: "No­body of­fi­cial­ly brought it to my at­ten­tion. I have not re­ceived any­thing in writ­ing."How­ev­er, I have heard com­plaints."It is dif­fi­cult for a min­is­ter to act if there is noth­ing in writ­ing. If ac­tion has to be tak­en there must be a for­mal re­quest."No mem­ber of the board can mi­cro­man­age," he added."It is against the pol­i­cy of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Act."

As to whether he was con­cerned that an act­ing CEO had quit the job just four months af­ter he was ap­point­ed, Khan said: "I know that Ku­mar Mo­hammed was brought from the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He knew the chair­man and has now been placed as the new act­ing CEO. So hope­ful­ly they would have a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship."