Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor, Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior pub­lic ser­vice of­fi­cials re­main tight-lipped on re­ports that Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram is un­der pres­sure to re­sign. But a se­nior pub­lic health spe­cial­ist has con­demned the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion as “dis­grace­ful”, while Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne has warned the ad­min­is­tra­tion to keep its hands off the CMO.

On Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Dr Paras­ram had been asked to re­sign days be­fore he was due to re­turn to du­ty af­ter months of va­ca­tion leave.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe told Guardian Me­dia he was un­aware of any such re­quest but stressed that pub­lic ser­vants’ leave falls en­tire­ly un­der the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. At­tempts to reach Pub­lic Ser­vice head Natasha Bar­row and Health Min­istry Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Asif Ali have so far been un­suc­cess­ful.

No one has pub­licly re­fut­ed Guardian Me­dia’s re­port. Bar­row pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed that Dr Paras­ram, who went on va­ca­tion in May, was sched­uled to re­sume du­ties on Sep­tem­ber 15. Dr Priya Laloo is cur­rent­ly act­ing as CMO.

Dr Paras­ram has served as CMO since Jan­u­ary 2017, a post he could hold un­til re­tire­ment. Gov­ern­ment has giv­en no rea­son for re­port­ed­ly want­i­ng him out of of­fice.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar strong­ly crit­i­cised both Dr Paras­ram and the Gov­ern­ment, blam­ing their strate­gies for high case and death rates. Ques­tions about his fu­ture sur­faced in May when he went on leave, though Dr Bo­doe at the time de­scribed it as rou­tine ac­cu­mu­lat­ed leave, not linked to ter­mi­na­tion.

A se­nior pub­lic health spe­cial­ist who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty de­fend­ed Dr Paras­ram yes­ter­day, call­ing him a na­tion­al hero.

“I’m very, very dis­heart­ened and a bit an­gered about the lev­el of dis­re­spect be­ing met­ed out to the man right now, hav­ing served the coun­try,” the of­fi­cial said.

The spe­cial­ist not­ed that, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Dr Paras­ram was not po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned de­spite ap­pear­ing on gov­ern­ment plat­forms.

“He would give his ad­vice un­flinch­ing­ly, and it is for the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide the ex­tent to which it adopts it. Par­tic­u­lar­ly un­der the Quar­an­tine Act, on­ly the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer has that au­thor­i­ty, and I think he ex­er­cised it with af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion and some re­straint. He did well. He saved this coun­try,” the of­fi­cial said.

The spe­cial­ist added that Dr Paras­ram played a key role in pro­tect­ing med­ical pro­fes­sion­als dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“Be­cause of the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem and his stew­ard­ship, health­care work­ers’ lives were spared com­pared to oth­er coun­tries. In oth­er places the health­care work­er mor­tal­i­ty rate is 10–15 per cent. We did not have that cat­a­stro­phe or a dis­man­tling of the health­care sys­tem thanks to Dr Paras­ram’s di­rec­tion and lead­er­ship.”

Mean­while, at a pub­lic meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin on Wednes­day evening, PNM Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne came out in de­fence of Dr Paras­ram and oth­er pub­lic ser­vants.

“You can­not se­cure the health of our so­ci­ety if you are en­gag­ing in per­se­cu­tion against some of our most hard-work­ing pub­lic health of­fi­cials,” he told the crowd.

“Many of you were here al­ready, but on the news tonight there were re­ports of a cam­paign of pres­sure and per­se­cu­tion against some­one by the name, who I have great re­spect for, by the name of Dr Roshan Paras­ram, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Dr Browne then is­sued a warn­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC): “Hands off our hard-work­ing pub­lic health of­fi­cials.”

Dr Paras­ram was award­ed the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T, the coun­try’s high­est na­tion­al ho­n­our, in Sep­tem­ber 2022 for his “dis­tin­guished and out­stand­ing ser­vice” in pub­lic health, es­pe­cial­ly for lead­ing the na­tion­al COVID-19 re­sponse.

Ef­forts to con­tact Dr Paras­ram yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.