Derek Achong

The wife and three chil­dren of a man from east Trinidad, who passed away while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for the COVID-19 virus, last week, have been giv­en the green light to view his body be­fore manda­to­ry cre­ma­tion.

On Sun­day, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, who is rep­re­sent­ing Yas­min Ali, the wid­ow of Ra­j­coomar Ali, wrote the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­di­cat­ing that she and her chil­dren were de­nied lim­it­ed ac­cess de­spite there be­ing pro­vi­sions for such un­der the “Guide­lines and Rec­om­men­da­tions for Hos­pi­tal Staff and Fu­ner­al Agen­cies in the con­text of COVID-19.”

In the doc­u­ment, which was pub­lished at the start of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­si­fied ef­forts to lim­it the spread of the virus lo­cal­ly in March, rel­a­tives are al­lowed lim­it­ed ac­cess un­der strict con­di­tions.

The body is to placed in a spe­cialised view­ing or mor­tu­ary area by mem­bers of staff with prop­er per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

Be­sides sani­tis­ing be­fore and af­ter en­ter the area, rel­a­tives, who may view the body one at time must wear sur­gi­cal masks and can­not touch the body or come with­in three feet of it.

The en­tire body would not be ex­posed but rather the at­ten­dant on du­ty will un­zip the body bag to re­veal the de­ceased face.

“Per­mis­sion will be giv­en to use elec­tron­ic me­dia to stream im­ages to the be­reaved for not more than a minute,” the doc­u­ment said.

In a re­sponse sent, yes­ter­day morn­ing and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Sec­re­tari­at in­di­cat­ed that Ali and her chil­dren’s re­quest would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed and that the fu­ner­al home han­dling his body had been in­struct­ed to hold up on dis­pos­ing it, un­til the process is com­plet­ed.

The time for the view­ing was not fi­nalised in the let­ter as the Min­istry of Health would have to co­or­di­nate such with the fam­i­ly.

It al­so not­ed that while the State had ac­ced­ed to the re­quest for a last view­ing, it had not con­ced­ed on Ramdeen’s as­ser­tion that guide­lines should be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

While Ramdeen ad­mit­ted that the pol­i­cy was need­ed in the cir­cum­stances, he sug­gest­ed had the method of in­tro­duc­tion meant that cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were be­ing in­fringed.

Gerald Ramdeen

“This would clear­ly in­fringe up­on the rights of the es­tate of the de­ceased and the per­sons who are re­quired to per­form cer­tain re­li­gious rights in dis­pos­ing of the body. Such ac­tion would clear­ly be un­law­ful and il­le­gal in the present cir­cum­stances,” Ramdeen said.

He went on to sug­gest a method of cor­rect­ing the per­ceived er­ror.

“While this (re­quest for view­ing) is be­ing car­ried out I un­der­take to not to in­sti­tute pro­ceed­ings in the High Court to al­low you, in­stead of re­tain­ing Se­nior Coun­sel and a bat­tery of at­tor­neys from the pri­vate bar to seek an ad­journ­ment from the High Court at the ex­pense of the tax­pay­er, to has­ten the staff at the of­fice of the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel and put in place new reg­u­la­tions that would have the force of law, per­haps in the same terms as the present “Guide­lines and Rec­om­men­da­tions for Hos­pi­tal Staff and Fu­ner­al Agen­cies in the con­text of COVID-19.”

Ac­cord­ing to the le­gal cor­re­spon­dence, Ali’s hus­band, a di­a­bet­ic, went to the San­gre Grande Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal on Au­gust 27 and com­plained of feel­ing un­well.

He was ward­ed and the fol­low­ing day was trans­ferred to the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty-one of the main fa­cil­i­ties be­ing used by the Min­istry of Health in its par­al­lel health care sys­tem for ad­dress­ing the pan­dem­ic.

While the fam­i­ly claimed that they re­ceived lim­it­ed up­dates on his con­di­tion, they al­leged that on Sep­tem­ber 3, they were in­formed his con­di­tion wors­ened and that he would be trans­ferred to the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) at the new Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

They were then in­formed that he would not be trans­ferred as he was in­tu­bat­ed and placed on a ven­ti­la­tor in the High De­pen­den­cy Unit at the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty.

They claimed that there was some de­lay in per­form­ing dial­y­sis on Ali, who was al­so suf­fer­ing from kid­ney fail­ure but it was even­tu­al­ly done, last Mon­day.

Ali passed away the fol­low­ing day.

Ali’s rel­a­tives made the re­quest last Fri­day, but were ini­tial­ly de­nied.

Rel­a­tives of for­mer Sea Lots busi­ness­man and com­mu­ni­ty leader Cedric “Burkie” Burke, who al­leged test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus and passed away late last week, have al­so sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion if they are un­able to have a pri­vate au­top­sy per­formed on his body be­fore dis­pos­al.

The Min­istry of Health has agreed to re­lease his med­ical records for the fam­i­ly and their med­ical ex­perts to con­sid­er be­fore pur­su­ing their in­tend­ed re­quest.