Gail Alexan­der

The UNC is tak­ing away St Joseph con­stituents' time for at­ten­tion to their needs.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh made the com­ment as he re­buked UNC Sen­a­tor David Nakhid for bring­ing a mo­tion on Tues­day on Gov­ern­ment's pan­dem­ic man­age­ment, when it was Deyals­ingh's con­stituents' day and they've been af­fect­ed by floods and land­slides.

"I wish I could say it's a plea­sure to be here," Deyals­ingh said in the Sen­ate while speak­ing on Nakhid's mo­tion.

"Be­cause, as an MP, Tues­day is my con­stituen­cy day - the day when I meet con­stituents. And I'd have pre­ferred to have been in my con­stituen­cy of­fice to­day meet­ing and treat­ing with my con­stituents who've been af­fect­ed by flood­ing, land­slides and every­thing else that goes with it.

"But here am I to­day be­ing called away from treat­ing with my con­stituents' re­al prob­lems - deal­ing with COVID. What an ab­solute abuse and waste of this Sen­ate's time! The UNC ought to be con­demned for wast­ing the Sen­ate's time - to­day of all days - on a mo­tion like this!"

Nakhid wants a com­mis­sion of en­quiry on the Gov­ern­ment's COVID-19 man­age­ment. But he'd opened by ex­tend­ing UNC's "com­mis­er­a­tions and sup­port" to flood vic­tims in all the cir­cum­stances "and calami­tous events that ac­com­pa­nied such flood­ing."

Nakhid went on to blame Gov­ern­ment for the flood­ing and went fur­ther un­til re­mind­ed by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo of his COVID top­ic.

Nakhid claimed Gov­ern­ment "mis­han­dled the pan­dem­ic, was in­com­pe­tent and had clue­less lead­er­ship." He said the sit­u­a­tion re­quired the "creme de la creme, not as­pir­ing pro­fes­sion­als or hope­fuls which de­scribed what was im­ple­ment­ed."

Nakhid said the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als weren't the he­roes of the sit­u­a­tion, but doc­tors and nurs­es were. He stat­ed nurs­es hadn't got­ten their bonus yet.

Slam­ming Deyals­ingh 's man­age­ment, Nakhid added, "We got some­one with a BS in phar­ma­cy. In no coun­try did I find any­one less qual­i­fied to face chal­lenges, who we had in place was like ap­point­ing the Cul­ture Min­is­ter to cap­tain T&T's foot­ball team. They didn't even have a qual­i­fied doc­tor in charge. He should have re­signed...!"

Nakhid claimed T&T had Cari­com's high­est death rate and that pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment was need­ed there.

Deyals­ingh, among replies, said, "He speaks about the 'creme de la creme'! Dr Roshan Paras­ram (Or­der of T&T!), you want more 'creme de la creme' than that?

"Dr Maryam Richards - Cha­co­nia Gold! (award) , Dr Av­ery Hinds - Cha­co­nia Gold! Dr Michelle Trot­man - Cha­co­nia Gold! Pro­fes­sor Chris­tine Car­ring­ton - Cha­co­nia Gold! That is' creme de la creme'!"

Deyals­ingh said if, for in­stance, act­ing UNC Sen­a­tor Dr Tim Gopeesingh was "so won­der­ful," why didn't he re­duce the ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty rate when he was in the PP Gov­ern­ment. Deyals­ingh said un­der Gopeesingh's tenure, 1.5 women died month­ly in hos­pi­tals in child­birth - but on­ly one died for this year in his own tenure.

Stat­ing the ben­e­fits of the par­al­lel health sys­tem and that over 2,200 med­ical staff were em­ployed for the par­al­lel health sys­tem, Deyals­ingh asked where the pri­vate sec­tor would get so many per­son­nel.

"Ab­solute pop­py­cock! T&T nev­er had a short­age of ven­ti­la­tors or per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment. But the UNC wants to make T&T look like a bas­ket case in this era of the Big Fib - as I can't say Big 'L' ."

Deyals­ingh said the UNC's way to treat COVID-19 in­volved sun­shine and hy­drox­cholo­quine.