Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Dr Car­ol Bha­gan-Khan, the wife of Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, re­mains un­de­cid­ed on whether she will take up the job as the new di­rec­tor of health at the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA)."I have not made a def­i­nite de­ci­sion as yet," she told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day."The Ex­press in­di­cat­ed that I def­i­nite­ly was not tak­ing up the job but I am still con­sid­er­ing it. I have not made any de­ci­sion," she said.

Bha­gan-Khan has come un­der pub­lic crit­i­cism for her de­ci­sion to ap­ply for the job in the health sec­tor, since her hus­band has min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.While she topped the in­ter­view, the is­sue of an ap­par­ent con­flict of in­ter­est sur­rounds her pend­ing ap­point­ment which was high­light­ed in a T&T Guardian ex­clu­sive.

How­ev­er, Bha­gan-Khan has dis­missed such claims, in­sist­ing the is­sue does not arise. If she even­tu­al­ly ac­cepts the post­ing, she is ex­pect­ed to pick up du­ties from May 1.Both she and Dr Suresh Poona were short­list­ed for the job.How­ev­er, the NWRHA, in a re­lease on Tues­day, stat­ed Pooran in­di­cat­ed he was no longer in­ter­est­ed in act­ing as the di­rec­tor of med­ical health.He is al­so the med­ical chief of staff at the NWRHA. He act­ed in the post since Jan­u­ary 2012.

Re­it­er­at­ing yes­ter­day that she was in­formed she was suc­cess­ful at the in­ter­view, Bha­gan-Khan said: "I was told I topped the in­ter­view and they were im­pressed with me. "While I have not yet re­ceived a con­tract they did ask me if I was hired and when I will be able to start. I said from May 1 be­cause I have some­thing to do un­til the end of April."

Bha­gan-Khan al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cor­rect an er­ror in her cur­ricu­lum vi­tae (CV).Her CV stat­ed that in 1982 she at­tained both her bach­e­lor of sci­ence (BSc) de­gree from Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty, Hal­i­fax, No­va Sco­tia, Cana­da, and doc­tor­ate of med­i­cine from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona, Ja­maica. "It was an er­ror. I did by BSc in 1977 and my oth­er de­gree at Mona, Ja­maica, was in 1982. It was a ty­po. I re­alised it af­ter I sent my CV. At this point I am still con­sid­er­ing," Bha­gan-Khan added.