An­na-Lisa Paul

Hours af­ter al­le­ga­tions of a link be­tween a rel­a­tive of Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and a lo­cal com­pa­ny that the Gov­ern­ment was us­ing to or­der COVID-19 vac­cines from Hong Kong sur­faced, the min­is­ter was pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion against Suzette Lowe and Mar­cia Brave­boy for mak­ing the claims and pub­lish­ing them on so­cial me­dia.

In a two-page re­lease via the Health Min­istry yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh con­demned the al­le­ga­tions and de­nied there was any con­nec­tion be­tween him­self and the VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny.

The Brave­boy Re­port had on Sun­day claimed that the Gov­ern­ment had or­dered the vac­cines from Hong Kong through a lo­cal med­ical com­pa­ny linked to Deyals­ingh’s fam­i­ly. The re­port named the Hong Kong-based com­pa­ny Hewasky Quest Glob­al as the in­ter­na­tion­al con­tact through which VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny al­leged­ly made the re­quest.

It was al­so al­leged that VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny has an of­fice on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain and that a rel­a­tive of the min­is­ter was the own­er of a com­pa­ny that al­leged­ly shares the same ad­dress as VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny.

In dis­miss­ing the al­le­ga­tions yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh’s re­lease stat­ed, “There is no af­fil­i­a­tion be­tween the Ho­n­ourable Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Min­is­ter of Health, or any­one in his fam­i­ly and VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny.

“There is no af­fil­i­a­tion be­tween the Ho­n­ourable Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Min­is­ter of Health, or any­one in his fam­i­ly and any oth­er COVID-19 vac­cine and/or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­er and/or dis­trib­u­tor.

“VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny does not share a busi­ness ad­dress with any or­gan­i­sa­tion linked to the Min­is­ter of Health or his fam­i­ly.”

Deyals­ingh’s re­lease not­ed, how­ev­er, that VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny did con­tact the min­istry on the is­sue of vac­cines.

“VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny did write to the Min­is­ter of Health, the Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Health and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of­fer­ing COVID-19 vac­cines to Trinidad and To­ba­go for pur­chase,” the re­lease said.

“The lo­cal au­tho­rised dis­trib­u­tor for As­traZeneca and As­traZeneca them­selves con­firmed that VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny is not au­tho­rised to of­fer COVID-19 vac­cines for sale, on be­half of As­traZeneca. There is no con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment be­tween the Min­istry of Health and VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Com­pa­ny for the pur­chase of COVID-19 vac­cines, nor is any such arrange­ment be­ing con­tem­plat­ed.”

Deyals­ingh al­so urged the pub­lic to re­frain from shar­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion “which could de­rail the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to se­cure au­then­tic, WHO-ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines for the pop­u­la­tion in the short­est time frame.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, VARY Med­ical and Sci­en­tif­ic Co. Ltd di­rec­tor Dr Yash Shar­ma said they had “no com­ment” to make on the mat­ter at the time. How­ev­er, Shar­ma said the com­pa­ny would most like­ly is­sue a state­ment to­day.

This is not the first time Deyals­ingh has had to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions that a rel­a­tive was al­leged­ly af­fil­i­at­ed with a com­pa­ny re­ceiv­ing state con­tracts.

In Au­gust 2018, he was forced to set the record straight fol­low­ing claims by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est in the award of ma­jor state projects. At the time, he de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and as­sured that all con­tracts award­ed by the Min­istry of Health were above board. How­ev­er, he con­firmed that his wife had been pro­vid­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for a par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny over the past 15 years span­ning sev­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Re­gard­ing his wife’s al­leged in­volve­ment in sev­er­al projects, Deyals­ingh had said back then that with re­gards to the Mt. Hope School of Den­tistry project, this was a UWI project and not a gov­ern­ment project as sug­gest­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said he had no in­volve­ment in that project. On the Red House restora­tion project, he said when it was dis­cussed at a Cab­i­net meet­ing he de­clared an in­ter­est in the mat­ter and took no part in the de­lib­er­a­tions, which was in keep­ing with the high­est stan­dards of trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance.

He again de­nied hav­ing any in­volve­ment in that project. On re­fur­bish­ment work done on two wards at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal dur­ing that time, Deyals­ingh al­so said the con­tract was award­ed by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty and ap­proved by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary since he had de­clared an in­ter­est in the mat­ter. Sim­i­lar­ly, he again claimed to have no in­volve­ment in the project.