Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A doc­tor, whose in­tern­ship was ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter a video of her en­gag­ing in an al­leged­ly racist rant went vi­ral in 2018, may be re­in­stat­ed ear­ly next year.

The de­vel­op­ment in re­la­tion to Dr Dehlia Gabriel was an­nounced yes­ter­day by so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, as the case came up for hear­ing be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

In a Face­book post fea­tur­ing Gabriel, Ever­s­ley, who as­sist­ed her in pur­su­ing the le­gal ac­tion over the past sev­en years, said the court had giv­en her lawyers and those for the Min­istry of Health un­til Jan­u­ary 20 to set­tle the dis­pute.

“By the grace of God, she would be re­in­stat­ed. The lawyers on both sides, for Dr Gabriel and the min­istry, would meet short­ly to fi­nalise the fi­nal arrange­ments,” Ever­s­ley said.

He not­ed that Gabriel did not re­ceive any as­sis­tance from politi­cians af­ter the in­ci­dent.

“To those who have sup­port­ed her, to those who want to see her back on the job, and to those who went to prayers for her, I want to say thank you very much.

“Dr Dehlia Gabriel suf­fered too long, and her judg­ment has now been added un­to her for her suc­cess,” he added.

Gabriel ap­plied to the min­istry to be an in­tern af­ter she grad­u­at­ed with a de­gree in Med­i­cine from St George’s Uni­ver­si­ty in Grena­da in 2015.

She as­sumed her po­si­tion at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in Jan­u­ary 2016, but sev­er­al months lat­er, she was di­rect­ed not to re­port for du­ty un­til she pro­vid­ed a re­port from a psy­chi­a­trist in­di­cat­ing her fit­ness to per­form the du­ties.

Con­sul­tant psy­chi­a­trist Pro­fes­sor Ger­ard Hutchin­son pro­vid­ed a re­port rec­om­mend­ing that she be al­lowed to con­tin­ue with ap­pro­pri­ate sup­port.

Gabriel re­mained un­der sus­pen­sion and filed a trade dis­pute in the In­dus­tri­al Court.

In June 2017, the min­istry per­mit­ted Gabriel to re­join the in­tern­ship pro­gramme.

She was di­rect­ed to at­tend meet­ings with a spe­cial­ist psy­chi­a­trist, who even­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ed a re­port to Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram, di­ag­nos­ing Gabriel as suf­fer­ing from para­noid per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der.

In June 2018, Gabriel made the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry posts di­rect­ed at pa­tients and co-work­ers.

She was again sus­pend­ed and asked to re­spond to over two dozen mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions.

In Ju­ly 2018, Gabriel’s con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed on the ba­sis that her con­duct, some of which was ad­mit­ted by her, con­sti­tut­ed gross mis­con­duct and con­duct un­be­com­ing of a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al.

Gabriel filed a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit chal­leng­ing the min­istry’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate her.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed re­fused Gabriel per­mis­sion to pur­sue the case.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that she had not pre­sent­ed a case which was ar­guable and had a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess af­ter a tri­al.

He al­so found that she had an al­ter­nate rem­e­dy, as she could pur­sue an­oth­er trade dis­pute be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.