Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment will move to over­haul the coun­try’s out­dat­ed sys­tem for ap­prov­ing med­ica­tions, ques­tion­ing why drugs al­ready ap­proved by in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised reg­u­la­tors should face lengthy de­lays be­fore reach­ing pa­tients in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised the is­sue yes­ter­day while ad­dress­ing new­ly ap­point­ed per­ma­nent sec­re­taries at a spe­cial lun­cheon at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. She said she had been ex­am­in­ing re­ports of med­ica­tion short­ages and dis­cov­ered that ap­pli­ca­tions to reg­is­ter cheap­er drugs were be­ing held up for as long as a year.

“I’m see­ing that peo­ple are talk­ing about short­ages of med­ica­tions and so on. And I’m told that there are per­sons wait­ing to ap­ply to reg­is­ter med­ica­tions, cheap­er med­ica­tions, for one year,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said she was told the de­lays were linked to a com­mit­tee that was not func­tion­ing, as well as out­dat­ed rules, reg­u­la­tions and the coun­try’s med­ical for­mu­la­ry.

She ques­tioned why Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ued to re­ly on an old sys­tem when ad­vances in med­i­cine and tech­nol­o­gy had pro­duced new­er, more ef­fec­tive drugs at cheap­er prices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that the coun­try should con­sid­er re­ly­ing on ap­provals from in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies rather than sub­ject­ing every med­ica­tion to an ex­ten­sive lo­cal re­view.

“Look, if the WHO (World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion) ap­proves that med­ica­tion, what’s wrong with it? If the US FDA ap­proves it, what, we bet­ter, we brighter?” she asked.

She said in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies have sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater re­sources to con­duct sci­en­tif­ic re­search and as­sess­ments than Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Let’s do it and let’s get these med­ica­tions. Peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. And they’re cheap­er,” she said.

Dur­ing her ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked how old the coun­try’s for­mu­la­ry was and was told it dat­ed back to 1975.

“So we are liv­ing in 2026 with 1975 for­mu­la­ry,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said she had spent much of the pre­vi­ous night re­search­ing pos­si­ble so­lu­tions and in­di­cat­ed that work on ad­dress­ing the prob­lem would con­tin­ue.

“I spent all night read­ing on what to do and how to do it and how to fix it... We will fix it,” she said.

She used the is­sue as an ex­am­ple of why the pub­lic ser­vice must be­come more re­spon­sive and move away from out­dat­ed sys­tems that cre­ate un­nec­es­sary de­lays for cit­i­zens.

“Our sys­tems must re­main high­ly re­spon­sive to the peo­ple we serve. And we have to come out of the old way of do­ing things,” she said, adding that Gov­ern­ment must al­so keep pace with tech­no­log­i­cal change.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar hopes for more mon­ey next year

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so lament­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources, re­veal­ing that her ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to ad­dress a num­ber of State com­pa­nies she de­scribed as de­funct or non-op­er­a­tional.

She said a re­cent re­view of min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios un­cov­ered nu­mer­ous com­pa­nies that re­main on the State’s books de­spite lit­tle or no ap­par­ent ac­tiv­i­ty.

“There were a whole lot of com­pa­nies. And I said, what are these? What do they do? Do they work? What hap­pens?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said in­for­ma­tion sub­se­quent­ly pro­vid­ed by Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Natasha Bar­row and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­vealed “a lot of these de­funct, I call them de­funct, or non-op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies.”

“They’re just sit­ting on the books,” she said, adding that she in­tends to ad­dress some of them dur­ing the new par­lia­men­tary term.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar es­ti­mat­ed there could be be­tween 15 and 30 such en­ti­ties and urged per­ma­nent sec­re­taries to iden­ti­fy pro­grammes and com­pa­nies with­in their min­istries that were no longer func­tion­ing ef­fec­tive­ly.

She point­ed to cas­es where State en­ti­ties may have on­ly one or two em­ploy­ees while still main­tain­ing a board, specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy­ing Trin­toc as an ex­am­ple.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said al­low­ing stag­nant en­ti­ties to re­main in place was con­sum­ing re­sources that could oth­er­wise be di­rect­ed to­wards de­liv­er­ing ser­vices to cit­i­zens.

“When these are there and they’re stag­nant or de­funct or non-op­er­at­ing, they’re tak­ing up space, time, ad­min­is­tra­tive time, and mon­ey,” she said.

“And mon­ey, as you know, is a very scarce re­source at this point in time.”

Against that back­drop, the Prime Min­is­ter ex­pressed hope that the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion would im­prove.

“But I live in hope that next year we will have some more mon­ey to de­liv­er to the peo­ple,” she said.

With the bud­get process ap­proach­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries their lead­er­ship would be crit­i­cal in prepar­ing min­istries and en­sur­ing min­is­ters were equipped with ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on ex­pen­di­ture, projects, tar­gets and per­for­mance.

She said the Gov­ern­ment’s suc­cess must ul­ti­mate­ly be mea­sured not by ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es but by tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments in cit­i­zens’ lives.

“Every un­nec­es­sary de­lay af­fects some­one wait­ing on a ser­vice, wait­ing for an ap­proval, wait­ing for a pay­ment or an op­por­tu­ni­ty,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments on the scarci­ty of fi­nan­cial re­sources come as sev­er­al pub­lic-sec­tor trade unions, in­clud­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), con­tin­ue to press the Gov­ern­ment for the set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.