Renu­ka Singh

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne has con­demned Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors for at­tack­ing the “spir­it” of hard-work­ing pub­lic ser­vants.

Browne made the com­ment as he re­spond­ed to UNC Sen­a­tor Dr Tim Gopeess­ingh’s con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate.

“I am a proud grad­u­ate of the Med­ical Sci­ences Fac­ul­ty of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies,” Browne said, adding that Gopeesingh was one the best lec­tur­ers at that fac­ul­ty.

“He in­spired me and I de­vel­oped great re­spect and I still have great re­spect for Dr Gopeesingh. He has al­so saved many lives in this coun­try.”

“So I was deeply, deeply dis­ap­point­ed in some el­e­ments of Sen­a­tor Gopeesingh’s con­tri­bu­tion,” Browne added.

Browne said that Gopeesingh boast­ed that he had taught sev­er­al of the mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment’s COVID-19 re­sponse team and re­ferred to them as “novices and neo­phytes.”

“Well, I have a mes­sage to Dr Gopeesingh, yes you taught some of them and to­day your stu­dents, in­clud­ing me, are now grown and serv­ing and con­tribut­ing to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“A good teacher would take that as a cred­it, as op­posed to tear­ing down and at­tack­ing and den­i­grat­ing the very ser­vice that your stu­dents are proud­ly pro­vid­ing to­day.”

Browne said the “worst part” was that the pub­lic of­fi­cers were not in the Cham­ber to de­fend them­selves against Gopeesingh’s at­tack.

“I don’t con­sid­er any mem­ber of this Cham­ber a cow­ard, but to at­tack their ser­vice in the way that it was at­tacked, the man­ner it was ap­proached, I am forced to re­gard that as a cow­ard­ly ap­proach,” he said.

Browne said that Gopeesingh had used his Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to at­tack the pub­lic ser­vants and he would de­fend them.

He then read out Gopeesingh’s so­cial me­dia post days af­ter he re­cov­ered from COVID-19, in which he made a spe­cial men­tion and thanks to the doc­tors and nurs­es in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem.

“Where was he hos­pi­talised? In a dif­fer­ent coun­try with a dif­fer­ent CMO (Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer) and a dif­fer­ent PMO (Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer)?” Browne asked.

“It was right here in T&T,” he added.