Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Idi Stu­art is call­ing for the Foren­sic Ward to be re­moved from the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal af­ter two men es­caped on Wednes­day.

Stu­art says with an em­ploy­ee-to-in­mate ra­tio of one to 15, it is a se­cu­ri­ty risk that should have been ad­dressed a long time ago.

The Foren­sic Ward is where ac­cused pris­on­ers are held and eval­u­at­ed.

On Wednes­day, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel at St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal were con­duct­ing rou­tine checks around 5.30 am when they dis­cov­ered that Ever­son Hazel­wood and Joshua Gar­raway were miss­ing.

The two have been charged with mur­der and rob­bery with vi­o­lence.

In 2011, then head of the psy­chi­atric nurs­es unit at the hos­pi­tal Dave Sookram, pe­ti­tioned then high court judge An­tho­ny Car­mona to have the ward moved to a prison. He added then that there were 41 pa­tients in the ward.

Speak­ing on the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, Stu­art said if the ward is not moved, se­cu­ri­ty must be im­proved.

“Over the years, and this is in ex­cess of 30 years, this ar­gu­ment has been prof­fered to move that Foren­sic Ward out of the hos­pi­tal. It’s way too dan­ger­ous. But in the ab­sence of that, there must be more strin­gent safe­ty mea­sures. And def­i­nite­ly, I don’t think any­one would ex­pect one reg­is­tered men­tal nurse to pre­vent these crim­i­nals from es­cap­ing. You have to have your wits about you. You can’t make an er­ror,” Stu­art said.

Stu­art, a psy­chi­atric nurse, ex­plained the ward is some­what like a prison with­in a hos­pi­tal, which is nor­mal­ly manned by one nurse, es­pe­cial­ly at night. He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to at­tract and main­tain nurs­es in gen­er­al, specif­i­cal­ly men­tal health nurs­es es­pe­cial­ly men, re­sult­ing in fe­male nurs­es hav­ing to treat and guard men­tal­ly un­sta­ble men charged with crim­i­nal of­fences.

But while Stu­art is call­ing for the ward to be­come part of one of the na­tion’s pris­ons, act­ing Prison Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe said it is not an im­me­di­ate fix as the in­fir­mary can’t han­dle the in­flux of men­tal­ly ill pris­on­ers.

“If that is the plan, then we speak about phys­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion be­cause we’re talk­ing about es­tab­lish­ing a foren­sic de­part­ment with­in the prison, which of course will re­quire in­fra­struc­tur­al changes and con­struc­tion to take place.”

He added such a move would al­so re­quire gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed both Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh on the mat­ter. Hinds did not re­spond while Deyals­ingh ad­vised that the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) An­tho­ny Blake be con­tact­ed.

Blake promised to re­spond but up to late yes­ter­day evening had not.

Hazel­wood was sent to the fa­cil­i­ty on Feb­ru­ary 3 for 14 days for a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion af­ter he was charged with mur­der. Gar­raway is charged with rob­bery with vi­o­lence.