An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter an em­ploy­ee was gunned down on the com­pound of the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal as he ar­rived to work, coun­selling be­gan for trau­ma­tised col­leagues and oth­er staff.

Among them was North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) CEO Davlin Thomas, who ac­knowl­edged the trau­ma of the brazen in­ci­dent had left many work­ers suf­fer­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly.

Mar­vin Safe, 29, of North Man­zanil­la Road, Man­zanil­la, was killed around 6.30 am on Mon­day, as he ar­rived for work.

The fa­ther of one had been em­ployed at the hos­pi­tal for the past three years.

Speak­ing via phone yes­ter­day, Thomas con­firmed that coun­selling ser­vices had been ac­ti­vat­ed.

“Psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists and a team of so­cial work­ers are en­gag­ing staff, they even en­gaged me. This is all-around trau­ma they are ad­dress­ing,” he said.

Pressed to say what con­cerns staff and mem­bers of the pub­lic had ex­pressed fol­low­ing the killing, Thomas said it was un­der­stand­able that peo­ple would be scared. But he in­sist­ed that the in­ci­dent had not oc­curred be­cause of gaps in the NCRHA’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

He said al­though the am­bush was car­ried out at the en­trance to the hos­pi­tal, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel were at work and in place.

Ques­tioned about in­creased se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures be­ing in­tro­duced at the AGH as a re­sult of Mon­day’s in­ci­dent, Thomas said as peo­ple ven­ture deep­er in­to the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, they would en­counter in­creased se­cu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures.

How­ev­er, he re­mind­ed, “One has to re­mem­ber that this is a pub­lic fa­cil­i­ty and you can­not hin­der the en­trances.”

Thomas said while the mur­der oc­curred on the com­pound, it does not mean that hos­pi­tal se­cu­ri­ty had lapsed.

“On the day it­self, the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus did not fail. It’s just sim­ply that some­body was there with a high-pow­ered ri­fle,” he said.

He said the NCRHA had im­ple­ment­ed stricter sur­veil­lance and mon­i­tor­ing pro­ce­dures two months ago at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope.

“We spent a lot of re­sources and time to se­cure our fa­cil­i­ties,” he said, adding, “We have drones in­volved as well.”

Thomas said the equip­ment is used dur­ing the shift changeover for med­ical staff such as nurs­es and doc­tors ar­riv­ing and leav­ing the var­i­ous carparks.

“We use the drones to give them that ex­tra as­sur­ance too, so drones would be over­head and look­ing. That has been one of our suc­cess sto­ries.”

Com­mend­ing the NCRHA’s staff mem­bers for their re­silience and ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty, Thomas said this was a group that had stood unit­ed on the front­line to fight the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic when noth­ing was known about the virus, and it was this same group that would ral­ly to get through this lat­est and trag­ic cir­cum­stance.

He said their com­mit­ment was ev­i­denced by the fact that staff main­tained a sched­uled well­ness ap­point­ment with the pub­lic to con­duct an aer­o­bics and yo­ga class at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah, Tacarigua, last evening.

Mean­while, the Min­istry of Health ex­tend­ed its “deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends and cowork­ers of Mr Mar­vin Safe.”

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the Health Min­istry said Safe had been an em­ploy­ee of the NCRHA since 2020.

The min­istry added: “Our heart­felt sym­pa­thies are of­fered to his fam­i­ly and friends dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.”