Gail Alexan­der

Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan is a case of a min­is­ter who has lost his cred­i­bil­i­ty, says In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Prof Harold Ramkissoon."The ho­n­ourable min­is­ter seems to ex­cel in sweep­ing things un­der the car­pet," Ramkissoon added, while speak­ing about is­sues in the Health Min­istry.He spoke about that dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on a pri­vate mo­tion call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to reaf­firm the prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy.

Ramkissoon said the min­is­ter had promised an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the over-ra­di­a­tion of pa­tients at the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre. "But to date we don't have a re­port, not a sin­gle per­son has been held re­spon­si­ble and there has been strong ev­i­dence, which I brought to the Sen­ate, with re­spect to neg­li­gence bor­der­ing on crim­i­nal neg­li­gence but to date no one has been brought to jus­tice," he added.

Ramkissoon said an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion was ques­tions about T&T's in­fant mor­tal­i­ty rate. He said it was 28 out of every 100,000 births in T&T while it was on­ly three in Sin­ga­pore and ten in Bar­ba­dos.He added: "We even had a case this month–Sara Lutch­man–and the stan­dard re­sponse you get from the min­is­ter and health of­fi­cials when you ask them to ac­count for these deaths, is: 'We're in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

"Even if they in­ves­ti­gat­ed, get a re­port, no one is brought to jus­tice. No one has been held re­spon­si­ble and there's ev­i­dence of in­com­pe­tence and neg­li­gence in the Min­istry of Health."And giv­en the fact that the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty is a close-knit fam­i­ly, and I have no prob­lem with that, they try to pro­tect their own."But in that case we should not have a Min­is­ter of Health who is a med­ical doc­tor. The ho­n­ourable min­is­ter is a case, an ex­am­ple of a min­is­ter who, in my view, has lost his cred­i­bil­i­ty."

Ramkissoon said when "peo­ple lose hope, dark clouds hov­er over T&T's democ­ra­cy. Democ­ra­cy, which was good gov­er­nance, was alive in T&T," though the ques­tion was if it was well, and if so, what Gov­ern­ment was do­ing about it.He said cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion in­dex­es in­di­cat­ed T&T's im­age in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na was that it was a "high­ly cor­rupt" state, and af­ter 50 years of In­de­pen­dence and sev­er­al gov­ern­ments, T&T must break out of "mal-gov­er­nance. We can't con­tin­ue the same old way. Peo­ple are get­ting tired."

He said the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion promised to act and how deep its com­mit­ment was re­mained to be seen."But time isn't on their side," he said.Ramkissoon ad­vo­cat­ed a mix of rep­re­sen­ta­tive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry sys­tems. Say­ing con­sul­ta­tion and di­a­logue were "al­most non-ex­is­tent," he urged ref­er­en­dums should be in­clud­ed in con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.Com­mend­ing Gov­ern­ment on the Ryan Re­port on crime, he said that should not be a "dust-col­lec­tor on the shelf."

Ramkissoon, con­grat­u­lat­ing new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George on "his as­cen­sion to the hot seat," called on him to leave a lega­cy.