Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has pledged to take “ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion, if nec­es­sary” against Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates, while Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee which un­cov­ered her al­leged mis­con­duct is set to meet to­day to de­cide on her fu­ture par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The de­vel­op­ment comes as a high-pro­file in­quiry by the Pub­lic Ac­counts and Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee (PAAC) in­to the State’s han­dling of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals was abrupt­ly ad­journed dur­ing an in-cam­era ses­sion on Mon­day, af­ter what sources de­scribed as a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ad­journ­ment fol­lowed al­le­ga­tions that Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates, a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee, as­sist­ed for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in prepar­ing his wit­ness state­ment. The is­sue re­port­ed­ly arose af­ter “Track Changes” ed­its were dis­cov­ered in a Mi­crosoft Word doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by Deyals­ingh in er­ror, rais­ing eth­i­cal and pro­ce­dur­al con­cerns.

Guardian Me­dia has ob­tained a copy of the doc­u­ment, which con­tains tracked changes at­trib­uted to in­di­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as Janelle John-Bates and Faris Al-Rawi. The ed­its at­trib­uted to John-Bates ap­pear in blue and in­clude dele­tions to por­tions of para­graphs 20 and 21.

In the wit­ness state­ment, Deyals­ingh wrote that he was ad­vised by the Prin­ci­pal Phar­ma­cist, Mrs Ane­sa Si­boo, that con­tract terms re­quired phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items to have a min­i­mum 18-month ex­piry pe­ri­od, fail­ing which NIPDEC could re­ceive re­place­ment stock or cred­it from lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors. He al­so stat­ed he was not aware whether the com­mit­tee had been in­formed of this.

He fur­ther not­ed that small states are of­ten re­quired to ac­cept quan­ti­ties ex­ceed­ing their needs in or­der to meet man­u­fac­tur­ers’ min­i­mum pro­duc­tion re­quire­ments, warn­ing that re­fus­ing such terms could re­sult in short­ages af­fect­ing pa­tients.

Those pas­sages were struck through in the doc­u­ment, along­side a com­ment at­trib­uted to John-Bates ques­tion­ing the ba­sis of the in­for­ma­tion. She wrote: “Were you in­formed of this by Ms Si­boo dur­ing your tenure as Min­is­ter of Health, or due to a re­cent con­ver­sa­tion with Ms Si­boo? If you were not aware of this as Min­is­ter, I would be cau­tious of in­clud­ing it now.”

The doc­u­ment al­so shows the changes were made on March 23, two days be­fore the PAAC met, rais­ing ques­tions as to whether the Sen­a­tor failed to dis­close her al­leged ac­tions to the Com­mit­tee on March 25.

When con­tact­ed, PAAC Chair­man Jagdeo Singh de­clined to com­ment.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands a spe­cial emer­gency sit­ting of the PAAC is sched­uled for to­day, where mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to de­ter­mine whether John-Bates should be re­moved from the com­mit­tee.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les did not re­spond to ques­tions on the mat­ter. How­ev­er, PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­firmed the par­ty is mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion, while stress­ing the need for cau­tion.

“We have to be very care­ful that what­ev­er we do and what­ev­er we say, we don’t breach the Stand­ing Or­ders of Par­lia­ment or be found in con­tempt of the Stand­ing Or­ders,” he said.

He added, how­ev­er, “Once all of the in­for­ma­tion comes to hand in the ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner, the PNM will take what­ev­er ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is nec­es­sary in the cir­cum­stances.”

The au­thor­i­ty to re­move a sen­a­tor rests with the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader. Gon­za­les not­ed that both John-Bates and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is serve as PNM rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the com­mit­tee.

Robin­son-Reg­is, when con­tact­ed, de­clined to com­ment on the specifics of the al­le­ga­tion but ex­pressed con­cern about con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

“As a mem­ber of the PAAC, I am con­cerned that a mat­ter con­sid­ered by the com­mit­tee in cam­era has en­tered the pub­lic do­main,” she said.

She added that the is­sue raised broad­er pro­ce­dur­al ques­tions re­quir­ing care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion by all mem­bers, stress­ing that dis­cus­sion should not be prej­u­diced by pub­lic dis­clo­sure.

At­tempts to reach PAAC mem­bers De­vesh Ma­haraj and Sad­dam Ho­sein were un­suc­cess­ful. Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate Leader Dar­rell Al­la­har de­clined com­ment, stat­ing on­ly “no com­ment.”

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Bar­ry Padarath said, “The Gov­ern­ment has mem­bers on the com­mit­tee; I am cer­tain it is re­ceiv­ing their at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, this is deeply dis­turb­ing.”

Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen al­so com­ment­ed, say­ing: “If Judge A helps a de­fen­dant pre­pare for an ap­pear­ance they have to make in court in front of Judge A…”

Guardian Me­dia again at­tempt­ed to con­tact John-Bates, but she did not an­swer calls. On Tues­day, she al­so de­clined to re­spond to ques­tions out­side Par­lia­ment.