Loyse Vin­cent

Dr Agatha Car­ring­ton has re­signed as a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) coun­cil­lor and Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment.

Her res­ig­na­tion took ef­fect from Feb­ru­ary 28 and comes three days be­fore re­cent­ly-elect­ed head of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, as­sumes the po­si­tion of coun­cil­lor af­ter beat­ing Kelvin Charles in the in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tion on Jan­u­ary 26.

Con­tact­ed on her de­ci­sion to demit of­fice be­fore the end of term yes­ter­day, Car­ring­ton said: “I have noth­ing more to add to what I have al­ready said.”

Probed fur­ther on who would man­age the di­vi­sion as the THA con­tin­ues to tran­si­tion to its new lead­er­ship, Car­ring­ton said, “I am no longer part of the ex­ec­u­tive so I do not know any­thing.”

Com­ment­ing on Car­ring­ton’s res­ig­na­tion via a press re­lease, how­ev­er, Charles said her “com­bi­na­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence, pas­sion and per­son­al dri­ve to im­prove the health sec­tor has re­dound­ed to the ben­e­fit of To­bag­o­ni­ans.”

Car­ring­ton was ap­point­ed a THA coun­cil­lor and sub­se­quent­ly the Health Sec­re­tary by Charles in Jan­u­ary 2017. She was one of three coun­cil­lors ap­point­ed by Charles when he be­came Chief Sec­re­tary.

But Car­ring­ton’s tenure was not all smooth sail­ing. She fre­quent­ly came un­der fire for poor man­age­ment of the is­land’s health sys­tem and drew scathing crit­i­cism in 2018 af­ter mak­ing state­ments about the per­son­al life of THA Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil­lor Dr Faith B Yis­rael.

Dur­ing the THA’s 11th Ple­nary Sit­ting of the 2017-2021 pe­ri­od, Car­ring­ton, in an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to her op­po­si­tion col­league’s per­son­al life, said: “You (Dr B Yis­rael) are bit­ter that you can­not sleep, if you bit­ter like that now no­body will make you sweet far more to make you a par­ent.”

Car­ring­ton lat­er is­sued an apol­o­gy, stat­ing the com­ments were not meant to of­fend, em­bar­rass or hurt any of her col­leagues in the As­sem­bly. She shot in­to the spot­light again in 2019 when a Face­book pe­ti­tion to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to have her re­moved as Sec­re­tary for Health gar­nered 3,104 sup­port­ers. Dr B Yis­rael open­ly sup­port­ed the pe­ti­tion.

Reached for a re­ac­tion to Car­ring­ton’s res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day, B Yis­rael said she was still sad­dened by the state of the is­land’s health­care.

“I’m not heart­ened, I’m not hap­py as you would ex­pect. In­stead, I’m crit­i­cal­ly think­ing about the amount of in­tense and enor­mous amount of work that has to be done to re­turn this is­land’s health­care to a sense of nor­mal­cy,” B Yis­rael told Guardian Me­dia.

Mean­while, new po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil David­son-Ce­les­tine took up of­fice yes­ter­day (March 2). In­cum­bent THA Chief Sec­re­tary Charles’ term ends in Jan­u­ary 2021 but he has opt­ed to re­sign at the end of April.

At least one coun­cil­lor had to re­sign to al­low the new­ly-elect­ed David­son-Ce­les­tine to be­come a coun­cil­lor.