Gail Alexan­der

There will be Op­po­si­tion pres­sure in Par­lia­ment to­day for Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, in­clud­ing a call for his res­ig­na­tion.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress whip David Lee said yes­ter­day that the Op­po­si­tion will pi­lot a de­bate of no-con­fi­dence in Deyals­ingh at to­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting. To­day is Pri­vate Mem­ber’s Day when Op­po­si­tion busi­ness is done.

The mo­tion against Deyals­ingh by UNC Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishad Seecher­an, states that the Min­is­ter of Health “has per­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed his in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly un­der­take his du­ties in the health sec­tor for the wel­fare of our cit­i­zens.”

“Be it re­solved that this House ex­press a lack of con­fi­dence in the Min­is­ter of Health and call for his im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion,” the mo­tion states.

It’s the Op­po­si­tion’s lat­est no-con­fi­dence mo­tion, af­ter oth­ers against Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and an­oth­er against for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan when he was alive.

That’s still on the agen­da ex­pect­ed to be con­tin­ued against cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young.

A sim­i­lar mo­tion against Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is al­so still on the agen­da.

Lee said the mo­tion isn’t Seecher­an’s on­ly, since in­di­vid­u­als would have called on the Op­po­si­tion to use the op­tion. The mo­tion en­com­pass­es all health is­sues in Deyals­ingh’s six-year tenure, par­tic­u­lar­ly COVID mat­ters.

“This isn’t some­thing we want to do but we’re asked by the peo­ple to call him out. In six years, his han­dling of the min­istry leaves much to be de­sired. He’s the Health Min­is­ter and we’ve reached 768 COVID deaths see­ing many dif­fer­ent is­sues aris­ing with the pan­dem­ic.”

Lee said fam­i­lies like those of COVID vic­tim Lilawat­te Singh hadn’t seen their rel­a­tives for weeks un­til told they had died.

“There are many un­knowns when you en­ter hos­pi­tal for COVID. You hope to be tak­en care of, we don’t know if that’s oc­cur­ring. Peo­ple need an­swers, fam­i­lies are seek­ing clo­sure. We hear hor­ror sto­ries of vic­tims in the tents at some hos­pi­tals. Some nev­er emerge,’’ Lee said.

On whether any fam­i­lies asked the UNC to take the Gov­ern­ment to court for in­for­ma­tion on deaths, Lee said he wasn’t aware of any at­tor­ney do­ing that, al­though for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen did a mat­ter on buri­als.

“That’s why we’re seek­ing a com­mis­sion to find out about pa­tient care, many lost loved ones and didn’t get clo­sure.”

At UNC’s Mon­day fo­rum, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar read the ac­count of a per­son whose fa­ther died of COVID last Sun­day. It was UNC ac­tivist Al­lan Karim’s par­ent. He’d stat­ed his fa­ther need­ed emer­gency treat­ment but the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal had no emp­ty beds and his dad was sent to Mt Hope (Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency) Unit.

“Last Sat­ur­day, he re­mained wait­ing all day there (no treat­ment). I spoke to him Sun­day. His last words to me were, “I’ll talk to you lat­er, I’m sti­fling.” My dad may have had COVID but COVID didn’t kill him, neg­li­gence and lack of prop­er treat­ment killed him. Peo­ple need an­swers, the coun­try de­mands ac­count­abil­i­ty.’’