Cabinet approves new SWRHA board, says Bodoe

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

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Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says Cab­i­net has ap­proved a new board for the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), with the ap­point­ments ex­pect­ed to be for­mal­ly put in place soon.

Dr Bo­doe con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day at the open­ing of the St Johns Branch Trace Bridge. His com­ments came fol­low­ing a se­ries of res­ig­na­tions among SWRHA board mem­bers which raised ques­tions about the au­thor­i­ty’s lead­er­ship and its abil­i­ty to func­tion.

Asked whether chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr She­vanand Gopeesingh had al­so re­signed, Bo­doe said Dr Gopeesingh re­mained in his po­si­tion.

The min­is­ter al­so sought to clar­i­fy the ex­tent of the board changes, say­ing five mem­bers re­mained and four had re­signed.

“I just want to put that out there, leave that to rest. There was no col­lapse of the SWRHA,” he said.

How­ev­er, when asked whether the mem­bers who had not re­signed would be re­in­stat­ed, Bo­doe did not in­di­cate whether any of them would be ap­point­ed to the new board.

“A new board has been ap­point­ed and it will soon be in­stalled,” he said.

Mean­while, Bo­doe de­clined to com­ment on al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion sur­round­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of SWRHA work­ers, some of whom have tak­en le­gal ac­tion.

The mat­ter, which went through con­cil­i­a­tion at the Min­istry of Labour, is now head­ing to the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Bo­doe said the mat­ter was be­ing han­dled by the au­thor­i­ty.

“That is a mat­ter that the SWRHA is deal­ing with, and I will leave that in the hands of the SWRHA,” he said.

The board changes fol­low mount­ing con­cerns over the au­thor­i­ty’s gov­er­nance, in­clud­ing dis­agree­ments be­tween for­mer board mem­bers and the chief ex­ec­u­tive over the im­ple­men­ta­tion of board de­ci­sions.

For­mer di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon had pub­licly raised con­cerns about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the board and Dr Gopeesingh, al­leg­ing that the CEO had re­fused to im­ple­ment four res­o­lu­tions unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved by the eight-mem­ber board.

Dr Cha­toor­goon had called on Bo­doe and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­view the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions.