Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

A par­lia­men­tary probe in­to al­leged cor­rup­tion in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor is in­ten­si­fy­ing, with the com­mit­tee seek­ing to sum­mon for­mer Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram to an­swer claims he breached the law, while al­so or­der­ing a search of Min­istry of Health servers for email ev­i­dence of pos­si­ble favouritism.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) yes­ter­day con­tin­ued its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the state’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

The PAAC re­vealed that be­tween 2015 and 2024, Dr Paras­ram is­sued 2,761 spe­cial im­port per­mits to drug sup­pli­ers.

A spe­cial im­port per­mit is a reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ment for bring­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in­to the coun­try that are not cur­rent­ly reg­is­tered or are sub­ject to strict leg­isla­tive con­trol, such as an­tibi­otics or nar­cotics.

Chair­man Jagdeo Singh asked the tech­nocrats be­fore him, in­clu­sive of the prin­ci­pal phar­ma­cist, to point him to the law that gave Dr Paras­ram that au­thor­i­ty.

“To my knowl­edge, none ex­ist,” replied Farz Khan, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of an­a­lyt­i­cal ser­vices at CARIRI.

Singh con­tin­ued to press the tech­nocrats and pub­lic ser­vants.

Prin­ci­pal phar­ma­cist Ane­sa Dood­nath-Si­boo sought to of­fer an ex­pla­na­tion.

“It was my un­der­stand­ing that the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer is con­sid­ered the Chief Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer of the min­istry in terms of med­i­cines, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, pro­vi­sion of health­care, gen­er­al­ly for the coun­try, be­cause he’s con­sid­ered the com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ty,” she said.

How­ev­er, Singh re­spond­ed, “Your at­tempt to clothe the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer with a ve­neer of ju­ris­dic­tion by the adorn­ment of that fig leaf of a Chief Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer sim­ply doesn’t hold wa­ter.”

He then added, “It’s 2,761 times the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer ex­er­cised that ju­ris­dic­tion, which he plain­ly did not have by any leg­is­la­tion.”

Un­der­scor­ing how detri­men­tal this prac­tice was, Singh said, “So what you had is drugs which were not reg­is­tered, drugs which es­caped the sci­en­tif­ic scruti­ny, drugs which es­caped the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of its prove­nance, be­ing im­port­ed un­der a spe­cial per­mit, no fur­ther steps of reg­is­tra­tion tak­ing place, and it be­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly im­port­ed. That’s what hap­pened. That’s what the min­istry says, un­til it’s been stopped. Stopped now.”

Mean­while, Singh al­so asked that the servers at the Min­istry of Health be searched to as­cer­tain if pref­er­en­tial treat­ment was giv­en to cer­tain sup­pli­ers.

Singh was in pos­ses­sion of an email thread be­tween the prin­ci­pal phar­ma­cist and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Smith Robert­son. In the email thread, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive asked Dood­nath-Si­boo to re­view the com­pa­ny’s sub­mis­sion and pro­vide feed­back.

Singh said Dood­nath-Si­boo should have ig­nored that re­quest.

“Why didn’t you re­spond and say, hold a minute, I’m not your ad­vi­sor. I am a pub­lic of­fi­cial with a fidu­cia­ry du­ty to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Why didn’t you re­spond to him and put him in his place lit­er­al­ly, as we say in Trinidad?”

Dood­nath-Si­boo re­spond­ed, “Chair, hon­est­ly, I can’t tell you why.”

Singh said the PAAC must now de­ter­mine if this was a case of favouritism.

He said Dr Paras­ram will al­so be asked to come be­fore the PAAC and will al­so be pro­vid­ed with a tran­script of every­thing that was said at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing.

Guardian Me­dia tried to get a re­sponse from the for­mer CMO; how­ev­er, he did not re­spond to our ques­tions.