Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram is now on med­ical leave, Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe con­firmed yes­ter­day, though he de­clined to give de­tails on the du­ra­tion or tim­ing of the leave.

When ques­tioned out­side Par­lia­ment, Dr Bo­doe said, “My in­for­ma­tion is that the CMO is on med­ical leave at this point in time.” Pressed to ex­plain what that meant, he added, “He’s sub­mit­ted a sick leave. That’s ex­act­ly what it means.”

Asked when the leave was sub­mit­ted and how long it will last, the min­is­ter re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred ques­tions to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Health.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to both Paras­ram and Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Natasha Bar­row, but both de­clined to com­ment.

The con­fir­ma­tion comes amid con­tin­u­ing un­cer­tain­ty over Paras­ram’s fu­ture as the coun­try’s top pub­lic health of­fi­cer. Just days be­fore he was due to re­turn from months of va­ca­tion leave, re­ports sur­faced that he had been asked to re­sign.

Paras­ram, who was sent on va­ca­tion in May 2025, was sched­uled to re­sume du­ties on Sep­tem­ber 15, which he did, but not with­out pres­sure.

Paras­ram, who be­came one of the most vis­i­ble fig­ures dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic even earn­ing him the coun­try’s high­est award, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, has faced po­lit­i­cal pres­sure over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly from now Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who, while in op­po­si­tion, was sharply crit­i­cal of his per­for­mance.

In 2021, then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the then-gov­ern­ment’s (and Paras­ram’s health team’s) han­dling of the pan­dem­ic of amount­ing to “state-sanc­tioned, pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der,” point­ing to T&T’s high death rate de­spite be­ing un­der a state of emer­gency.