SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD
shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

The Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go has with­drawn its let­ter to Dr Avinash Sawh and will make a fresh de­ter­mi­na­tion at its meet­ing next month whether Sawh should be the sub­ject of an en­quiry.

In a let­ter from Al­lum Cham­bers, at­tor­ney Ra­jiv Per­sad, rep­re­sent­ing the Med­ical Board to at­tor­ney Mar­tin George, who rep­re­sents Sawh, Per­sad wrote, “The Coun­cil has ac­cept­ed my ad­vice and there­fore we wish to ad­vise that they have

agreed at their Reg­u­lar Month­ly Meet­ing for Jan­u­ary 2021 to for­mal­ly with­draw the let­ter sent to your client dat­ed 12th No­vem­ber 2020.”

The let­ter he ref­er­enced was ti­tled “Al­le­ga­tions against your good self” and not­ed there were five com­plaints made against Sawh- name­ly by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Kar­i­an Forde, Deni­ca Richards, Justin Ram­roop and Dr An­dre Al­leyne.

Per­sad said re­tract­ing the let­ter will al­low the coun­cil to de­ter­mine whether any of the per­sons who ini­ti­at­ed the com­plaints were will­ing to for­mal­ly fill out and sign com­plaint forms.

“If that hap­pens that ma­te­r­i­al, as well as what­ev­er oth­er ma­te­r­i­al that the Coun­cil has be­fore it that is rel­e­vant, will be sub­mit­ted to the Coun­cil who will con­sid­er afresh whether or not an en­quiry may be war­rant­ed.”

Sawh shot in­to the na­tion­al spot­light in ear­ly No­vem­ber, af­ter sev­er­al voice record­ings of con­ver­sa­tions be­tween him and an em­ploy­ee were re­leased on so­cial me­dia.

In those record­ings, Sawh was heard mak­ing racist and deroga­to­ry state­ments and threat­en­ing a fe­male em­ploy­ee.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on No­vem­ber 11, Sawh apol­o­gised re­peat­ed­ly for his state­ments, say­ing, “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.”