Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

In­dus­tri­al un­rest-that was the ex­cuse giv­en to for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in­for­ma­tion min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal who was boot­ed off a con­sul­tan­cy pro­gramme host­ed by the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) one week ago. Per­son­nel Man­age­ment Ser­vices Ltd (PM­SL) was con­tract­ed by the Au­thor­i­ty to pro­vide a fa­cil­i­ta­tor in keep­ing with ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als week.

Parsan­lal was as­signed to do the fa­cil­i­ta­tion on stress man­age­ment at the in­sti­tu­tion on April 27. How­ev­er, 24 hours be­fore Parsan­lal was sched­uled to speak, the Au­thor­i­ty's for­mer cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions co-or­di­na­tor, Nadi­ra Per­sad, con­tact­ed Parsan­lal in­form­ing him that his ser­vices would no longer be re­quired. Per­sad, who no longer works at the NCRHA, re­fused to speak when con­tact­ed.

Con­tact­ed last week Parsan­lal con­firmed that he was sched­uled to speak at the pro­gramme. "We had a con­tract and every­thing was on sched­ule. We (PM­SL) for­ward­ed them the pro­pos­al and they ac­cept­ed; so every­thing was in place. How­ev­er, on April 26, Ms Per­sad con­tact­ed me say­ing the pro­gramme had been can­celled be­cause there was in­dus­tri­al un­rest at the NCRHA and man­age­ment did not think it was fea­si­ble to have this type of func­tion at such a time be­cause it would have sent the wrong sig­nal," the for­mer min­is­ter said.

De­spite the can­cel­la­tion, Parsan­lal said the NCRHA agreed to ho­n­our the fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment for the con­trac­tu­al ser­vices. How­ev­er, around 10 pm, Parsan­lal said he re­ceived a sec­ond call from Per­sad in­form­ing him that Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan was against the can­cel­la­tion of the pro­gramme and asked if he was avail­able. Parsan­lal said he de­clined the of­fer due to a com­mit­ment at an­oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The move came two weeks af­ter the daugh­ter-in-law of Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards was side­lined to act as the med­ical di­rec­tor at the NCRHA. While the blame game con­tin­ues at the NCRHA as to who rec­om­mend­ed Ab­dool-Richards for the job, in­sid­ers told Sun­day Guardian that "pol­i­tics was at play" in mak­ing the de­ci­sion.