Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

More bod­ies may pile up at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, af­ter foren­sic pathol­o­gists Dr Valery Alexan­drov and Dr Es­lyn Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris re­ject­ed em­ploy­ment con­tracts from the Min­istry of Jus­tice, say­ing they do not in­clude med­ical cov­er­age or al­lowances for con­tin­u­ing med­ical ed­u­ca­tion.Sources said since last year, both pathol­o­gists have been clam­our­ing about the terms and con­di­tions un­der which they worked.How­ev­er, while Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris has gone on leave since Oc­to­ber, Alexan­drov has opt­ed to con­tin­ue work­ing with­out a con­tract with the hope that the min­istry will soon pro­vide prop­er med­ical cov­er­age. Ac­cord­ing to a con­tract ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, Alexan­drov was of­fered a ba­sic salary of $26,300 a month, a $2,700 trans­port al­lowance, a $10,000 du­ty al­lowance for ex­tend­ed work hours, an in­cen­tive al­lowance of $10,000, tele­phone al­lowance of $350 and a hous­ing al­lowance of $5,000.

How­ev­er, while he is en­ti­tled to per­son­al leave, com­pas­sion­ate leave in the event of a fam­i­ly death and sick leave, there is no med­ical in­sur­ance cov­er­age.Gra­tu­ity is paid on the ba­sis of sat­is­fac­to­ry com­ple­tion of du­ties equiv­a­lent to 20 per cent of the gross salary earned.Dur­ing a meet­ing with the Min­istry of Jus­tice last Wednes­day, both Alexan­drov and Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris were asked to sub­mit pro­pos­als for a new con­tract."Right now I am work­ing with­out a con­tract and they have not re­newed Dr Bur­ris's con­tract. We met with the min­istry of­fi­cials and we raised the is­sue of prop­er health in­sur­ance," Alexan­drov said.He re­vealed that pathol­o­gists were ex­posed to dan­ger­ous de­com­po­si­tion gas­es from corpses as well as tox­ic chem­i­cals such as ace­tone, for­ma­lin and car­cino­gens which cause lung, den­tal and oc­u­lar (eye) prob­lems."The peo­ple in the min­istry did not know we are ex­posed to these dis­eases which cause can­cer. Dur­ing the meet­ing di­rec­tor, hu­man re­sources at Min­istry of Jus­tice Desmond Hamil­ton and se­nior hu­man re­source of­fi­cer Joy Bood­hoo were sit­ting with eyes open wide when we told them about the con­di­tions un­der which we work. They said no­body ever gave them this in­for­ma­tion about us be­fore," Alexan­drov said.

He added that the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre had on­ly five mor­tu­ary at­ten­dants, when ide­al­ly there should be ten. "The X-ray tech­ni­cian is ex­posed to ra­di­a­tion and we are work­ing with dan­ger­ous sub­stances like gun­pow­der residue and for­ma­lin (a sub­stance used to pre­serve tis­sue from de­com­pos­ing), which is ten per cent car­cino­genic (can­cer-caus­ing). In every oth­er part of the world med­ical in­sur­ance is pro­vid­ed," Alexan­drov said.He added that all doc­tors reg­is­tered with the Med­ical Board had to do con­tin­u­ous med­ical ed­u­ca­tion, but no ed­u­ca­tion­al al­lowance is pro­vid­ed in the pathol­o­gists' con­tract.

57 au­top­sies in ten days

Since the start of the new year, Alexan­drov said he had done 57 au­top­sies in ten days. Since Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris is not on du­ty, Alexan­drov said work is shared with pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon Des Vi­gnes. "Nor­mal­ly our av­er­age work­load week­ly is 20 to 25 bod­ies a week and this is high­er than World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion guide­lines, which stip­u­late that a pathol­o­gist was sup­posed to do be­tween 250 to 350 au­top­sies a year. Last year I did 1,026 au­top­sies," Alexan­drov said.He ex­plained that the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre was op­er­at­ing be­low World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) stan­dards.Say­ing it was true that T&T could not match the salaries in the Unit­ed States, Alexan­drov said he hoped that prop­er stan­dards for pro­ce­dures could be de­vel­oped be­fore his tenure in T&T ends. He said while Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris was work­ing on the fi­nan­cial as­pects of their con­tracts, he was work­ing on the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al, en­vi­ron­men­tal and ad­min­is­tra­tive claus­es.

"I have doc­u­ments from the Eu­ro­pean Union, which com­pris­es 28 coun­tries, and every coun­try has a foren­sic ser­vice and a spe­cial com­mis­sion to de­vel­op stan­dards of pro­ce­dures," Alexan­drov ex­plained. Asked why he was con­tin­u­ing to work with­out a con­tract, Alexan­drov said his par­ents and most of his fam­i­ly were killed in the Holo­caust, the state-spon­sored per­se­cu­tion and mur­der of ap­prox­i­mate­ly six mil­lion Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime dur­ing World War II. "I sym­pa­thise with peo­ple when they lose their loved ones. How can I send them away when they sit wait­ing for hours to get the au­top­sy done," Alexan­drov said. He added that the planned new state-of-the-art foren­sic cen­tre would not func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly un­less it was prop­er­ly staffed with at least four pathol­o­gists and ten mor­tu­ary at­ten­dants.

Train­ing com­ing for foren­sics

Mean­while, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Em­manuel George said he was un­aware of the prob­lems be­ing faced by the pathol­o­gists at the cen­tre. He said, how­ev­er, that plans were afoot to build a mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty and to train peo­ple in foren­sic sci­ences. Last year, $3.7 mil­lion was ap­proved to up­grade the cen­tre.George re­ferred fur­ther ques­tions to Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim, who said a mas­ters in foren­sic sci­ence will be of­fered at the new­ly opened San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal from Sep­tem­ber."The Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, is tak­ing a proac­tive role in strength­en­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and bol­ster­ing the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment in crime de­tec­tion and erad­i­ca­tion, through the mas­ter's de­gree in foren­sic sci­ence," Karim said."This pro­gramme is en­vis­aged to be a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary pro­fes­sion­al pro­gramme which in­cor­po­rates phys­i­cal and bi­o­log­i­cal sci­ences, crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, psy­chol­o­gy and law to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive un­der­stand­ing, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and a skilled ap­proach to the ev­i­den­tiary process in crime."Karim said the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Lan­cashire's School of Foren­sic and In­ves­tiga­tive Sci­ences would pro­vide lab­o­ra­to­ries and teach­ing ex­per­tise to de­liv­er the pro­gramme.