Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Lisa Agard has re­signed from her po­si­tion as Chair­man of the North­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA). Con­firm­ing the news to Guardian Me­dia when asked when ex­act­ly she re­signed, Agard briefly said, “Oh, weeks now,” but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on her fu­ture plans.

Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, con­firmed the res­ig­na­tion in a state­ment, say­ing, “Yes, she has re­signed. No rea­son was giv­en.” Deyals­ingh added that the Cab­i­net had al­ready agreed on a new ap­point­ment, though the name of the new chair­man would be made pub­lic on­ly once the for­mal in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment had been re­ceived.

“Once again, I thank Miss Agard for her ser­vice to the NWRHA and wish her all the best,” Deyals­ingh said.

He claimed he first made the an­nounce­ment at the open­ing of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block where Agard was no­tice­ably ab­sent. He con­firmed that Dr Les­ley Roberts is cur­rent­ly serv­ing as act­ing chair­man.

An­tho­ny Blake, CEO of the NWRHA, de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter, re­fer­ring all in­quiries to the Min­is­ter of Health.

Sources in­di­cate that nei­ther the staff of the NWRHA nor the pub­lic have re­ceived an of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment re­gard­ing Agard’s res­ig­na­tion.

Agard had served as chair­man of the NWRHA since 2019.

Her res­ig­na­tion fol­lows a tu­mul­tuous pe­ri­od in her ca­reer. In May 2021, she was ap­point­ed CEO of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), af­ter hav­ing served in an act­ing role for about a year. How­ev­er, her tenure at TSTT end­ed in No­vem­ber 2023, when she was fired fol­low­ing a high­ly pub­lic and con­tro­ver­sial da­ta breach that ex­posed the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of thou­sands of cus­tomers, in­clud­ing that of Prime Min­is­ter.

Be­fore her time at TSTT, Agard was al­so at the helm of Guardian Me­dia.