The doc­tor from South Trinidad who was heard on nu­mer­ous voice record­ings last Wednes­day us­ing racist re­marks and mak­ing threats to an em­ploy­ee has fi­nal­ly bro­ken his si­lence.

Dr Avinash Sawh, who owns and op­er­ates Sawh’s Med­ical As­so­ciates in San Fer­nan­do apol­o­gised pro­fuse­ly yes­ter­day dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, hours be­fore the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical Board (TTMB) was due to meet to dis­cuss his con­duct.

Guardian Me­dia tried con­tact­ing the board for an up­date from the meet­ing last evening but there was no re­sponse to calls or What­sApp mes­sage.

Sawh read from a four-page pre­pared state­ment dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, held at the of­fice of his at­tor­ney, Mar­tin George in Port-of-Spain. In an in­ter­view last week, George de­scribed Sawh’s com­ments as ‘rep­re­hen­si­ble’ and said the TTMB could take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against him. 

“For those state­ments, I deeply and un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise. There can be no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the state­ments that I made and I am step­ping forth and man­ning up and I ac­cept full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the na­tion­al out­cry that those state­ments have gen­er­at­ed and the hurt that has been felt by vary­ing sec­tors of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Sawh said.

In the now-vi­ral record­ings, Sawh was heard mak­ing racial state­ments about hir­ing Afro-Trinida­di­an nurs­es and la­belling an Afro-Trini­d­i­an po­lice of­fi­cer as a “dunce n****.”

He was al­so heard boast­ing about threat­en­ing to kill mul­ti­ple peo­ple and then pay­ing off the po­lice to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.

Yes­ter­day, he apol­o­gised to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, his for­mer em­ploy­ee - a nurse, his col­leagues, his pa­tients and the wider pop­u­la­tion.

“I recog­nise the ef­fect of what I have done and I as­sure each Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian that I will hence­forth de­vote my­self to­wards char­i­ta­ble works and so­cial con­tri­bu­tions in my ef­forts to un­do the hurt and harm that I have been re­spon­si­ble for in­flict­ing on the na­tion and I have start­ed this process by seek­ing pro­fes­sion­al help and guid­ance through this process,” Sawh said.

He said there was cur­rent­ly one East In­di­an nurse em­ployed at his prac­tice but vowed to hire staff on the ba­sis of their qual­i­fi­ca­tions and not their eth­nic­i­ty in the fu­ture.

He said he has nev­er paid a bribe to the TTPS.

When Guardian Me­dia asked whether it was a co­in­ci­dence that Sawh was apol­o­gis­ing on the same day the TTMB is sched­uled to meet, George said he had been in dis­cus­sions with Sawh for sev­er­al days but the tim­ing had noth­ing to do with the TTMB meet­ing.

George said Sawh’s state­ments were mere­ly a symp­tom of a greater is­sue in T&T.

He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a per­ma­nent coun­cil on race re­la­tions.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse yes­ter­day, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee said they were look­ing for­ward to the TTMB de­cer­ti­fy­ing Sawh.

“His be­hav­iour and sen­ti­ments would be ab­hor­rent un­der any cir­cum­stances but giv­en his pro­fes­sion and the faith which peo­ple who need med­ical care would put in him such racist con­vic­tions be­come dan­ger­ous,” di­rec­tor of the Com­mit­tee, Khafra Kam­bon said.

Kam­bon said now was not the time for in­ac­tion or de­layed ac­tion.

“There should be no place for some­one filled with such hate and bias to prac­tice his pro­fes­sion on peo­ple of any eth­nic­i­ty.”

But Kam­bon not­ed that Sawh’s state­ments were part of a larg­er so­ci­etal prob­lem.

He of­fered the ser­vices of the Com­mit­tee to the TTMB to as­sist in giv­ing doc­tors racial sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing.