Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

A par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee prob­ing the pro­cure­ment of med­i­cines is ex­am­in­ing whether a con­flict of in­ter­est and break­down in over­sight oc­curred, with at­ten­tion now fo­cused on Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer (PMO) Dr Maryam Ab­dool- Richards.

As the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) con­tin­ued its probe in­to the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, fo­cus briefly shift­ed from Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram to Dr Maryam Ab­dool Richards, an­oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cial who rose to promi­nence dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic through the Gov­ern­ment’s reg­u­lar me­dia brief­in­gs.

The mat­ter was raised by Com­mit­tee mem­ber Sad­dam Ho­sein while he ques­tioned the Health Min­istry’s act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Er­i­ca For­tune, about Dr Richards’ past af­fil­i­a­tion with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (NIPDEC).

Ho­sein asked, “PS, would you agree with me in terms of the op­er­a­tions and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the min­istry and NIPDEC be­ing a state en­ter­prise, that the state en­ter­prise NIPDEC is a client of the Min­istry of Health?”

PS For­tune con­firmed that the en­gage­ment is on a month-to-month ba­sis.

NIPDEC serves as the pri­ma­ry pro­cure­ment and lo­gis­tics agent for the Min­istry of Health, man­ag­ing the end-to-end sup­ply chain for the na­tion’s pub­lic health­care sys­tem, in­clud­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al sourc­ing, ware­hous­ing, and na­tion­wide dis­tri­b­u­tion of all phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ica­tions un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Plan (CDAP).

Ho­sein then asked, “And there must be some lev­el of sep­a­ra­tion be­tween the min­istry, which is the client, and NIPDEC, which is the procur­ing agency. You would agree with that?”

“I would agree, yes,” For­tune re­spond­ed.

Ho­sein then in­ten­si­fied his ques­tion­ing.

“The PMO, which is the Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health, Mrs Richards, was in fact a di­rec­tor of NIPDEC?” Ho­sein asked.

For­tune said she could not con­firm, but Ho­sein said he could.

“I could tell you that she was a di­rec­tor of NIPDEC, and then sub­se­quent­ly she be­came the chair­man NIPDEC,” Ho­sein said.

He then posit­ed, “So Mrs Richards was an em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry of Health, re­port­ing to the CMO, and at the same time serves as a di­rec­tor and the chair­man of NIPDEC. And NIPDEC be­ing the procur­ing agency, and the PMO be­ing a tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer in the min­istry who re­ports to the CMO, who then re­ports to the Min­is­ter of Health.”

“And as the chair­man of NIPDEC, PS, would you agree that the chair­man would nor­mal­ly con­firm pay­ments to var­i­ous, or the board sit­ting would con­firm pay­ments to var­i­ous sup­pli­ers?”

For­tune re­spond­ed, “I would think so, yes.”

In a scene rep­re­sent­ing a court­room, Ho­sein fol­lowed up with, “So there’s an em­ploy­ee of the min­istry who is a di­rec­tor of NIPDEC, sit­ting in the procur­ing agency, and would have been con­firm­ing pay­ments to var­i­ous sup­pli­ers.”

The PS said this was new in­for­ma­tion for her and would have to in­ves­ti­gate it.

Ho­sein al­so asked For­tune to look in­to whether there was a le­gal opin­ion pre­pared on this al­leged “con­flict of in­ter­est” with re­spect to the PMO serv­ing as a di­rec­tor and chair­man of the board of NIPDEC.

“And can you al­so con­firm whether or not, on the day of the gen­er­al elec­tion, which was the 28th of April, whether a le­gal opin­ion was pro­vid­ed by ex­ter­nal coun­sel, be­cause NIPDEC, the board dis­agreed with the in­ter­nal opin­ion, and the opin­ion pre­pared on elec­tion day was pre­pared by one, a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee, the chair­man of WASA then, Mr Nan­ga? In­di­cat­ing that there is no con­flict?”

For­tune said she would look in­to that as well.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Dr Ab­dool-Richards for a com­ment.

The PMO said, “I’ll de­fer to the act­ing PS and team for a re­sponse as per Min­istry of Health Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Pol­i­cy.”

At the be­gin­ning of yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of the PAAC, Chair­man Jagdeo Singh ac­knowl­edged the re­moval of PNM Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of im­prop­er con­duct. Singh made it clear that she was re­moved by her par­ty and not the PAAC. Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul took her place.