Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

Just days be­fore he was due to re­sume du­ties fol­low­ing months of va­ca­tion leave, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram has been asked to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, Natasha Bar­row, had con­firmed that af­ter va­ca­tion, which be­gan in May 2025, Paras­ram was set to re­sume du­ties on Sep­tem­ber 15.

How­ev­er, well-placed sources claimed yes­ter­day that there were now moves to block Paras­ram’s re­turn to work.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Bar­row yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe could not con­firm if the CMO was asked to re­sign.

When asked about the re­ports yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Bo­doe said, “Not to my knowl­edge, not to my in­for­ma­tion. Not as far as I’m aware.”

Asked if he is hap­py with Paras­ram con­tin­u­ing on as the CMO or if he’d rather a new per­son in that po­si­tion, Bo­doe said, “That is not for me to de­ter­mine; that is for the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.”

Asked if, ac­cord­ing to his in­for­ma­tion, Paras­ram will re­turn as this coun­try’s CMO next Mon­day, he said

“Ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Ser­vice reg­u­la­tions, yes.”

Fur­ther ques­tions were posed to the min­is­ter dur­ing a brief phone call; how­ev­er, he in­di­cat­ed that he was in the mid­dle of a meet­ing and asked if the ques­tions could be sent via text mes­sage.

The ques­tions posed in­clud­ed whether the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing a change in the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, if as Health Min­is­ter he is sat­is­fied with Paras­ram’s per­for­mance, his re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of the CMO’s han­dling of the pan­dem­ic while she was op­po­si­tion leader, and whether he would want Paras­ram to be re­placed by the cur­rent act­ing CMO Dr Priya Lal­loo.

But, re­spond­ing via What­sApp, Bo­doe would on­ly say, “The is­sue of pub­lic ser­vants’ leave, and act­ing ap­point­ments, are en­tire­ly in the hands of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DPA) and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC).”

He added, “As Min­is­ter of Health, I shall con­tin­ue to lead my min­istry in pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty health ser­vice to the na­tion with the ever-in­creas­ing ef­fort to con­tin­ue to im­prove ser­vices to the sat­is­fac­tion of our cit­i­zens.”

At­tempts to con­tact Paras­ram yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

Ef­forts were al­so made to get a com­ment from Act­ing CMO Dr Priya Lal­loo. When asked if she had re­ceived any in­struc­tion to re­main in the post be­yond Sep­tem­ber 15, Lal­loo de­clined an in­ter­view, not­ing that as a pub­lic ser­vant, she could not speak on the mat­ter and ad­vised that ques­tions be di­rect­ed through the prop­er chan­nels.

Un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing Paras­ram’s fu­ture as CMO sur­faced in May when he was sent on leave, with some ques­tion­ing if this was a pre­cur­sor to his ter­mi­na­tion.

At the time, Health Min­is­ter Bo­doe dis­missed claims that Paras­ram was sent on leave, clar­i­fy­ing that he had ap­plied for ac­cu­mu­lat­ed leave through the nor­mal pub­lic ser­vice process.

Paras­ram had re­ceived strong crit­i­cism from Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her time as op­po­si­tion leader dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

She re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the then-PNM gov­ern­ment’s man­age­ment of the pan­dem­ic, which she ex­tend­ed to Paras­ram and the wider pub­lic health team. She ar­gued that their strate­gies were in­ad­e­quate and claimed they led to a high num­ber of cas­es and deaths.

On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, she pub­licly called for Paras­ram to be re­placed as CMO, as well as for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Paras­ram was award­ed the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T, the coun­try’s high­est na­tion­al ho­n­our, in Sep­tem­ber 2022 for his “dis­tin­guished and out­stand­ing ser­vice” in the sphere of pub­lic health, es­pe­cial­ly for his role in lead­ing the na­tion’s pub­lic health re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.