An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers are un­de­cid­ed about how to pro­ceed with in­ves­ti­ga­tions against the med­ical in­tern who fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry of her rob­bery at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) on Sun­day night.

The of­fi­cers said yes­ter­day the young woman had not filed an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port, there­by elim­i­nat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of them be­ing able to charge her with waste­ful em­ploy­ment of po­lice time, al­though they not­ed she cre­at­ed pub­lic pan­ic and sparked out­rage among her col­leagues.

Checks with of­fi­cials at the St Clair and Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tions, as well as the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment con­firmed no com­plaint was made by the woman.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the in­tern, who was con­tract­ed by the Min­istry of Health and as­signed to the PoS­GH, ini­tial­ly said she was held at gun­point and robbed by a man in a se­clud­ed area in the car park at the back of the hos­pi­tal com­pound.

But dur­ing a meet­ing be­tween the in­tern, her par­ents and North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) of­fi­cials yes­ter­day, the woman ad­mit­ted she fab­ri­cat­ed the claim.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health said it had or­dered a full re­port from the NWRHA on the mat­ter and not­ed that mat­ters of se­cu­ri­ty of the staff and pa­tients of the na­tion's pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties were very se­ri­ous. The min­istry said the in­tern was no longer on du­ty since the re­port.

Sources said the woman had been of­fered coun­selling but it still to be de­cid­ed if any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion can be tak­en against her. Min­istry of­fi­cials con­firmed the mat­ter was en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of its le­gal de­part­ment.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, NWRHA CEO Shel­don Cyrus al­so con­firmed the in­tern's claim was a lie. Say­ing he met rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the doc­tors and nurs­es yes­ter­day to ad­dress gen­er­al com­plaints about se­cu­ri­ty at the hos­pi­tal, Cyrus as­sured im­me­di­ate short-term mea­sures would be in­tro­duced.

This is ex­pect­ed to in­clude in­creased light­ing through­out the com­pound and im­prove­ments to the perime­ter se­cu­ri­ty. He said they would al­so reach out to var­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty firms on mea­sures that could be adopt­ed.

Re­gard­ing a pos­si­ble po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he said: "If the po­lice de­cide to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter, it is our du­ty to work along with them."

T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) vice-chair­man, Kerne Ram­nath, said while the mat­ter was now deemed a hoax, their is­sues over se­cu­ri­ty re­mained.

While they called off their work-to-rule threat, he said there con­tin­ued to be le­git­i­mate se­cu­ri­ty is­sues for med­ical per­son­nel.

"There is no pro­tec­tion for the hu­man re­sources who are at risk of be­ing hi­jacked or robbed, es­pe­cial­ly due to its prox­im­i­ty to high risk ar­eas," Ram­nath said.