Bodoe: No health crisis in T&T

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has as­sured that there is no health cri­sis in T&T at this time.

Bo­doe made the com­ment in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a ques­tion by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les. She had asked, giv­en the protest ac­tion by nurs­es in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, what was the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to al­le­vi­ate the cur­rent health cri­sis, which is in its third week.

In his an­swer, Bo­doe al­so said that un­der the Gov­ern­ment, health­care sys­tems con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing ser­vices to thou­sands of pa­tients dai­ly.

“I thank all of our health­care work­ers in the RHAs and Min­istry of Health who con­tin­ue to work dili­gent­ly on a dai­ly ba­sis to serve the cit­i­zens of T&T,” Bo­doe added.

Op­po­si­tion PNM MP Colm Im­bert queried Bo­doe’s re­ply, not­ing that at that time, there were hun­dreds of nurs­es march­ing along In­de­pen­dence Square with po­lice block­ing off a se­ries of roads in the cap­i­tal.

Im­bert queried what Bo­doe’s de­f­i­n­i­tion of a “health cri­sis” was.

Bo­doe said his de­f­i­n­i­tion was, “...what tran­spired as health­care for the 10 years un­der the last gov­ern­ment.”

Beck­les al­so asked Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen if the min­istry had un­der­tak­en any im­me­di­ate ac­tion to ad­dress re­cent re­ports re­gard­ing sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing short­falls af­fect­ing the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions.

Ameen, who said Point Fortin Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions are on, said, “We’re work­ing with pri­vate spon­sors to­geth­er with the Point Fortin com­mu­ni­ty. The Cul­ture Min­istry, via the Best Vil­lage of­fice, is col­lab­o­rat­ing to deal with some of the events on the Bor­ough cal­en­dar. Mem­bers of the pub­lic are free to go to Point Fortin.”

Ameen said the Point Fortin MP will be meet­ing with the Point Fortin may­or this morn­ing (Sat), as there’s an en­tire cal­en­dar of events they’ll be col­lab­o­rat­ing on.

Ameen dis­missed PNM whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ query on whether the min­istry pro­vid­ed fund­ing to the Point Fortin cor­po­ra­tion to host Bor­ough Day. She said al­lo­ca­tions were giv­en to cor­po­ra­tions an­nu­al­ly and their coun­cils ap­prove fund­ing for dif­fer­ent items. She said the min­istry doesn’t di­rect­ly fund any event in a mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty.

Beck­les asked if an of­fi­cial re­quest was made to Ameen by the Point Fortin cor­po­ra­tion for fund­ing.

Ameen said the on­ly re­quest she had from Point Fortin—at her meet­ing on Wednes­day with all 14 cor­po­ra­tions —was to meet a short­fall for pen­sions and gra­tu­ities due to short al­lo­ca­tion un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment “and a pile-up of elec­tric­i­ty bills.”

Ameen said the Point Fortin Bor­ough didn’t pay T&TEC bills for three years and she’s work­ing with them and sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions on sim­i­lar is­sues.