Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is fac­ing se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence fol­low­ing claims that he pres­sured the state pro­cure­ment agency, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NIPDEC), to give pref­er­en­tial pay­ment to a ma­jor phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny.

Dur­ing a Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) ses­sion yes­ter­day, chaired by Jagdeo Singh, ten­sions ran high as the in­quiry in­to the state’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ac­qui­si­tions high­light­ed both al­leged po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and what was de­scribed as a rogue op­er­a­tion that went un­de­tect­ed for eight years.

NIPDEC gen­er­al man­ag­er Vyas Ram­phalie told the com­mit­tee that be­tween 2023 and 2025, he was in­struct­ed by Deyals­ingh to pri­ori­tise pay­ments to Aven­ta, a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing arm of the Agos­ti­ni Group, over all oth­er com­pa­nies.

Singh, press­ing Ram­phalie di­rect­ly asked, “Isn’t it cor­rect, Mr Ram­phalie, that you were in­struct­ed to give Aven­ta pref­er­en­tial pay­ment over every­body else?”

Ram­phalie replied, “There was a meet­ing with NIPDEC and the Min­istry of Health team from 2023 to ear­ly 2025, where var­i­ous al­lo­ca­tions of pay­ments were dic­tat­ed by the Min­istry.”

Singh fol­lowed up: “Who from the Min­istry of Health? Was the Min­is­ter of Health there? Did the Min­is­ter dic­tate pref­er­en­tial terms of pay­ment? The an­swer is yes or no.”

Ram­phalie re­spond­ed: “Yes.”

Singh said the Com­mit­tee would now send a let­ter to Deyals­ingh invit­ing him to ap­pear be­fore PAAC to clar­i­fy the is­sue.

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and told Guardian Me­dia he plans to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion.

“Mr Vyas Ram­phalie seems to be, po­lite­ly, a stranger to the truth. He went and spewed lies. I have al­ready ob­tained a record­ing of the ses­sion and have turned it over to my lawyers to take ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal ac­tion against Mr Ram­phalie,” he said.

When asked if he would ap­pear be­fore the PAAC, he replied: “I will seek the ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal ad­vice.”

The ses­sion al­so saw for­mer Drug Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (DAC) sec­re­tary Dr Deryck Pat­tron brand­ed a “rogue of­fi­cer” af­ter al­le­ga­tions sur­faced that he il­le­gal­ly al­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal reg­is­tra­tion forms.

Dur­ing the PAAC, Ag di­rec­tor of Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion Has­math Ali said Dr Pat­tron mod­i­fied of­fi­cial drug reg­is­tra­tion tem­plates, cre­at­ing re­quire­ments that small­er im­porters could not meet.

“When I took of­fice in 2025, I re­ceived sev­er­al com­plaints from im­porters. My in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that the changes in­tro­duced ‘oner­ous’ new re­quire­ments that were not stip­u­lat­ed in the leg­is­la­tion,” Ali said.

Ali ex­plained that while he could not find con­clu­sive ev­i­dence to take for­mal ac­tion, all paths led to Dr Pat­tron. When con­front­ed, the for­mer Sec­re­tary did not ad­mit wrong­do­ing, in­stead in­struct­ing Ali to “speak to the DAC.”

Com­mit­tee mem­bers ques­tioned who could have au­tho­rised such changes, but no one from the di­vi­sion could pro­vide an an­swer. Singh crit­i­cised the pro­longed fail­ure to de­tect the is­sue, de­scrib­ing Dr Pat­tron’s ac­tions as op­er­at­ing “as a run­away horse with­in the sys­tem.”

“No one went to the Min­is­ter or the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to say this was ul­tra vires the Act? Every­one sim­ply al­lowed Dr Pat­tron to op­er­ate unchecked?” Singh asked.

The Com­mit­tee con­firmed it will be send­ing let­ters to Dr Pat­tron to ap­pear be­fore PAAC to ex­plain who au­tho­rised the doc­u­ment changes.