Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) chair­man Jagdeo Singh has ac­cused for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh of at­tempt­ing to avoid giv­ing ev­i­dence be­fore the com­mit­tee by cre­at­ing a smoke­screen of con­cerns to dic­tate how a par­lia­men­tary in­quiry should be con­duct­ed.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of the PAAC, Singh said Deyals­ingh’s con­di­tions for ap­pear­ing be­fore the com­mit­tee amount­ed to an at­tempt by a wit­ness to set the rules of the pro­ceed­ings, some­thing he in­sist­ed the com­mit­tee would nev­er al­low.

“This is what I de­scribe as a Potemkin vil­lage in­tend­ed re­al­ly to mask Mr Deyals­ingh’s in­ten­tion of not com­ing to give ev­i­dence be­cause these are un­ten­able con­di­tions Mr Deyals­ingh wants to im­pose on this com­mit­tee,” Singh said.

The com­mit­tee is con­duct­ing an ex­am­i­na­tion in­to the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, in­clud­ing the process­es gov­ern­ing their im­por­ta­tion and ap­proval.

Deyals­ingh had been in­vit­ed to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee but did not at­tend yes­ter­day’s hear­ing.

In­stead, the for­mer min­is­ter told the me­dia on Thurs­day he re­mained will­ing to ap­pear once con­cerns he raised about due process had been ad­dressed to his sat­is­fac­tion.

Deyals­ingh said he had “to­tal re­spect” for par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees, hav­ing served as a par­lia­men­tar­i­an for 15 years and pre­vi­ous­ly ap­peared be­fore com­mit­tees in both gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion. How­ev­er, he said he had asked that sev­er­al pro­ce­dur­al is­sues be placed on the record and in­clud­ed in the com­mit­tee’s fi­nal re­port be­fore he tes­ti­fied.

The dis­pute comes months af­ter con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed dur­ing the com­mit­tee’s in­quiry when Deyals­ingh sub­mit­ted a wit­ness state­ment con­tain­ing tracked changes from for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who has since con­firmed he is rep­re­sent­ing Deyals­ingh and for­mer PAAC mem­ber Janelle John-Bates.

Singh said the com­mit­tee had ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed to dis­cuss Deyals­ingh’s let­ter of con­cerns pri­vate­ly af­ter it was re­ceived on Tues­day evening.

He said a re­sponse ac­knowl­edg­ing the cor­re­spon­dence was sent with­in 24 hours, ad­vis­ing that the com­mit­tee would de­lib­er­ate on the is­sues be­fore pro­vid­ing a for­mal re­ply.

How­ev­er, Singh said that changed af­ter Deyals­ingh pub­licly dis­cussed the con­tents of his let­ter be­fore the com­mit­tee had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond.

“We’ve been forced in­to a sit­u­a­tion where we have to ad­dress it in pub­lic,” Singh said.

Singh re­ject­ed Deyals­ingh’s com­plaints over dis­clo­sure of doc­u­ments and pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness, ar­gu­ing that the for­mer min­is­ter was seek­ing to re­open mat­ters that had al­ready been con­sid­ered by the com­mit­tee on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions.

He al­so dis­missed Deyals­ingh’s re­quest for a pri­vate, in-cam­era meet­ing with the com­mit­tee, ac­com­pa­nied by his at­tor­ney, say­ing par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees de­ter­mine their own pro­ce­dures and that the le­gal thresh­old for hold­ing pri­vate hear­ings had not been met.

“No wit­ness sets the pro­ce­dur­al rules of this com­mit­tee,” Singh said.

Singh stressed that Deyals­ingh would be af­ford­ed the same lev­el of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness, re­spect and cour­tesy as every oth­er wit­ness but in­sist­ed the com­mit­tee would not cre­ate spe­cial arrange­ments for any in­di­vid­ual.

Asked for a re­sponse af­ter the sit­ting, Deyals­ingh said his po­si­tion re­mains the same.

PARAS­RAM AP­PEARS BE­FORE PAAC

The long-await­ed ap­pear­ance of for­mer chief med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram be­fore the PAAC yes­ter­day, saw com­mit­tee chair­man Jagdeo Singh mount a de­tailed le­gal chal­lenge to the Min­istry of Health’s long-stand­ing sys­tem of grant­i­ng spe­cial per­mis­sion for the im­por­ta­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, ques­tion­ing whether the prac­tice had any ba­sis in law.

Dr Paras­ram, whose at­ten­dance be­fore the com­mit­tee had been an­tic­i­pat­ed for months amid the PAAC’s in­quiry in­to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ap­proval process, was ques­tioned ex­ten­sive­ly about his role in ap­prov­ing spe­cial im­port per­mits and whether those ap­provals cir­cum­vent­ed the statu­to­ry drug reg­is­tra­tion process.

Singh walked the for­mer CMO through the var­i­ous laws gov­ern­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, nar­cotics and tox­ic chem­i­cals be­fore ar­gu­ing that the Food and Drugs Act makes no pro­vi­sion for the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer to ap­prove the reg­is­tra­tion or im­por­ta­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

“There is no men­tion of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer in this piece of leg­is­la­tion,” Singh said, main­tain­ing that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the reg­is­tra­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals rests sole­ly with the Min­is­ter of Health, even though min­is­ters rou­tine­ly re­ly on ad­vice from pub­lic ser­vants.

Paras­ram ac­knowl­edged that when he be­came Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Cab­i­net al­so ap­point­ed him chair­man of the Drug Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, the body es­tab­lished un­der the Food and Drugs Act to ad­vise the min­is­ter on mat­ters re­lat­ing to drug reg­is­tra­tion and stan­dards.

A ma­jor fo­cus of the hear­ing was the min­istry’s use of “spe­cial per­mis­sion” let­ters to al­low the im­por­ta­tion of drugs out­side the or­di­nary reg­is­tra­tion process.

Singh ar­gued that there is no statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion cre­at­ing such per­mis­sions and ques­tioned why ap­provals had been grant­ed for com­mon prod­ucts such as Ben­gay, Philips Milk of Mag­ne­sia and Re­dox­on, when the leg­is­la­tion al­ready pro­vides a sup­ple­men­tary reg­is­tra­tion process for changes in­volv­ing pack­ag­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing sites and la­belling.

Paras­ram de­fend­ed the prac­tice, say­ing spe­cial per­mis­sions were gen­er­al­ly re­served for three sit­u­a­tions: med­ical emer­gen­cies, per­son­al-use re­quests, and na­tion­al drug stock­outs.

In stock­out sit­u­a­tions, he ex­plained, the ap­provals al­lowed al­ter­na­tive prod­ucts not al­ready reg­is­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be im­port­ed tem­porar­i­ly so pa­tients could con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing treat­ment.

He al­so re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that he per­son­al­ly de­cid­ed which ap­pli­ca­tions should be ap­proved, telling the com­mit­tee every re­quest was first as­sessed by of­fi­cials with­in the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion or the Prin­ci­pal Phar­ma­cist, who con­duct­ed the nec­es­sary due dili­gence be­fore for­ward­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for his sig­na­ture.

The hear­ing al­so ex­posed con­flict­ing ev­i­dence over whether Paras­ram in­tend­ed to abol­ish the spe­cial per­mis­sion process in late 2024. While Singh cit­ed min­utes sug­gest­ing the prac­tice was to be elim­i­nat­ed, Paras­ram de­nied that was ever his in­ten­tion, in­sist­ing his ob­jec­tive had been to tight­en con­trols and en­cour­age sup­pli­ers to move prod­ucts through the nor­mal reg­is­tra­tion process in­stead.

The PAAC was ad­journed to a date to be fixed.