Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says all pos­si­ble av­enues—in­clud­ing “some very in­no­v­a­tive ways”—are be­ing ex­plored to get doc­tors back in­to the work­force, and he con­firmed the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing pro­pos­als such as em­ploy­ing CEPEP work­ers on mega farms.

Ad­dress­ing the UNC’s 2026 Bud­get con­sul­ta­tion on Tues­day, Bo­doe said the up­com­ing bud­get might out­line some so­lu­tions to em­ploy doc­tors cur­rent­ly at home.

The con­sul­ta­tions, held in con­stituen­cies na­tion­wide, seek pub­lic feed­back on pri­or­i­ties for the UNC’s first na­tion­al bud­get. At Tues­day’s event, sug­ges­tions ranged from health­care im­prove­ments to con­cerns over se­cu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

Bar­rack­pore busi­ness­man Vishal Ba­boolal ar­gued that Pe­nal/Debe has a larg­er pop­u­la­tion than To­ba­go but re­ceives on­ly a frac­tion of the al­lo­ca­tion To­ba­go gets.

“Why can’t we get a big­ger piece of that pie?” Ba­boolal asked.

He al­so pro­posed a state-of-the-art com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for Pe­nal, equipped with a mu­se­um, li­brary, con­fer­ence cen­tre, swim­ming pool, ten­nis and bas­ket­ball courts, in­door and out­door foot­ball grounds, bat­ting cages, a the­atre, con­cert ar­eas, pic­nic sites, and tracks for walk­ing and cy­cling.

Bo­doe wel­comed the Pe­nal com­plex idea but not­ed that such a project would ul­ti­mate­ly fall un­der the Prime Min­is­ter’s purview. He urged Ba­boolal to at­tend the PM’s up­com­ing bud­get con­sul­ta­tion.

Dr Riyad Ho­sein, who said for­mer Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh “made a mess” of the min­istry, rec­om­mend­ed adopt­ing com­bi­na­tion drugs, which he claimed the PNM Gov­ern­ment had re­sist­ed. Ho­sein al­so pressed for ur­gent im­ple­men­ta­tion of promised cath labs—not on­ly to re­duce pa­tient costs but al­so be­cause South Trinidad, with its pre­dom­i­nant­ly East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion, faces high lev­els of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

“The South West RHA is the biggest RHA in T&T, cov­er­ing a catch­ment area of 700,000 peo­ple from Freeport on­wards. Yet we get the same re­sources as ER­HA and NCRHA,” Ho­sein said.

“To­ba­go re­cent­ly com­plained about pa­tient load—that’s a dai­ly sit­u­a­tion in San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Let them come and work here; they’d get rur­al al­lowances.”

Bo­doe re­spond­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to es­tab­lish the cath labs soon and will con­sid­er in­clud­ing com­bi­na­tion drugs in the re­view of the Na­tion­al For­mu­la­ry of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Re­cent med­ical grad­u­ate Dr Melanie Dookan­tee ex­pressed hope that the bud­get would al­lo­cate fund­ing for em­ploy­ing health­care pro­fes­sion­als, not­ing that she and 150 oth­er doc­tors are cur­rent­ly at home.

Bo­doe cor­rect­ed the fig­ure, stat­ing it was not just 150 doc­tors but 587 ap­pli­ca­tions across all RHAs.

“The Gov­ern­ment is look­ing at all pos­si­ble av­enues, in­clud­ing some very in­no­v­a­tive ways, to get doc­tors back in­to the work­force,” he said, hint­ing that some de­tails might be an­nounced in the bud­get. “We might be able to an­nounce one or two of these.”

Dr Deisha Har­ryper­sad, cit­ing her tem­po­rary post­ing at Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, called for more per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment so­lu­tions. Bo­doe promised to look in­to it. Tri­cia Bernard re­quest­ed stipends for stu­dent nurs­es.

Prakash Dookan­tee sug­gest­ed us­ing CEPEP work­ers on mega farms to en­hance food se­cu­ri­ty and pro­posed prof­it-shar­ing mod­els for work­ers. Bo­doe said the idea is un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

On Dookan­tee’s pro­pos­al for pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions to help em­ploy doc­tors, Bo­doe said the Gov­ern­ment is ex­am­in­ing all op­tions.

Bo­doe al­so ac­knowl­edged long pa­tient wait times at clin­ics and promised Ganesh Ram­lochan that the on­go­ing prob­lem of lost pa­tient files must stop. He not­ed that the re­cent $18 mil­lion in ex­pired drugs was linked to in­ven­to­ry man­age­ment is­sues, adding that drug short­ages are fun­da­men­tal­ly a sup­ply chain man­age­ment prob­lem that must be ad­dressed.

“Where’s the four per cent?”

For­mer Siparia West prin­ci­pal Son­ny­lal Sookoo crit­i­cised the lack of ur­gency in ap­point­ing sec­ondary school prin­ci­pals and ques­tioned de­lays in im­ple­ment­ing the promised four per cent salary in­crease.

Sookoo called for these is­sues to be ad­dressed in the 2026 Bud­get.

Bo­doe replied that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter would han­dle the ap­point­ments, but added: “He’s very, very busy. We have a big mess to fix. We have to fly the plane while we’re fix­ing it.”

Phar­ma­cist Roy Omar rec­om­mend­ed cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for spe­cial­ist train­ing across all ar­eas of phar­ma­cy, em­pha­sis­ing the short­age of on­col­o­gy phar­ma­cists, es­pe­cial­ly with the new open­ing of the Can­cer Cen­tre (South), for­mer­ly Petrotrin’s Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal.

Thack­oor Boodan urged the Gov­ern­ment to di­ver­si­fy rev­enue sources be­yond the en­er­gy sec­tor, ad­vo­cat­ing in­vest­ments in agri­cul­ture and tourism.

Boodan de­scribed the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary as “a dis­grace,” cit­ing poor road con­di­tions, garbage along the en­trance, and a di­lap­i­dat­ed vis­i­tor cen­tre.

“The peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from that are the Nanans and Kalpoos. I won­der if they pay tax­es on that or if that re­source be­longs to them or to T&T,” Boodan said.

He ar­gued that the sanc­tu­ary be­longs to the peo­ple, not pri­vate tour op­er­a­tors, and sug­gest­ed that gov­ern­ment-run tick­et­ing could gen­er­ate rev­enue while still pay­ing op­er­a­tors. Boodan said he once wrote for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day to pro­pose that Gov­ern­ment col­lect rev­enue from the Bird Sanc­tu­ary and Pitch Lake.

Palmiste oil and gas spe­cial­ist Ray Wong Doo of­fered his ex­per­tise to the Gov­ern­ment, while Ish­war Soocom­s­ingh of­fered to com­pile sta­tus re­ports on mal­func­tion­ing hos­pi­tal equip­ment. Bo­doe said au­dits of hos­pi­tal equip­ment will be part of the RHAs’ plans once boards are ap­point­ed.