Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is call­ing on To­bag­o­ni­ans to join him this morn­ing out­side the Di­vi­sion of Health as he de­mands the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of Sec­re­tary of Health Dr Faith Breb­nor.

The protest is tak­ing place amidst mount­ing con­cern over what Mor­ris de­scribed as a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar am­bu­lance pro­cure­ment scan­dal. He said while Breb­nor has re­mained silent on the is­sue, she has been ac­tive on so­cial me­dia—shar­ing a video con­tain­ing pro­fan­i­ty, as well as par­ty pho­tos and jokes.

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from a 2023 con­tract for 12 am­bu­lances orig­i­nal­ly val­ued at $5.5 mil­lion. That fig­ure has since bal­looned to over $17 mil­lion. So far, on­ly four am­bu­lances have ar­rived on the is­land, and one re­port­ed­ly failed while trans­port­ing a pa­tient.

In a Face­book Live video on Wednes­day night, Mor­ris called the sit­u­a­tion a na­tion­al em­bar­rass­ment and urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to stand up for ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic of­fice.

“This is class­less. This is the ul­ti­mate bot­tom of the bar­rel. This is low. Even if it’s three of us, let us stand to­geth­er and say enough is enough,” he said.

He al­so raised con­cerns about a video shared by Breb­nor on her per­son­al Face­book page fea­tur­ing a rap­per us­ing ex­ple­tives and re­peat­ed­ly warn­ing oth­ers to “stop play­ing with my name.” The video, which was post­ed along with three walk­ing emo­jis, has sparked pub­lic back­lash.

Mor­ris de­scribed the post as dis­re­spect­ful and in­ap­pro­pri­ate, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the on­go­ing pro­cure­ment is­sue and its im­pli­ca­tions for pub­lic health. He said it demon­strat­ed a lack of re­gard for the peo­ple who are ask­ing le­git­i­mate ques­tions about how tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey has been spent. Mor­ris plans to hand-de­liv­er a let­ter to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to­day, for­mal­ly call­ing for Breb­nor to be fired.

He said the let­ter will out­line se­ri­ous breach­es of pub­lic trust and pro­fes­sion­al con­duct.

The protest fol­lows his calls for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the am­bu­lance con­tract.

Mor­ris claimed the pro­cure­ment process lacked trans­paren­cy and the ve­hi­cles de­liv­ered were of a dif­fer­ent make and mod­el than orig­i­nal­ly ap­proved.

He has al­so writ­ten to the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau.

The sit­u­a­tion has been dubbed “Am­bu­lance­Gate” by crit­ics who say the es­ca­lat­ing costs and de­lays have put lives at risk.

Re­ports in­di­cate that the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) has spent over $8 mil­lion so far, with some am­bu­lances still miss­ing or deemed un­fit for use.

Breb­nor has not com­ment­ed on the protest or the grow­ing de­mands for her res­ig­na­tion. She has not re­spond­ed to calls for com­ment.

At­tempts to reach Bio­med­ical Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed own­er David Jaikissoon were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.