Fuad: All NWRHA heads must roll

ALL MANAGERS in the North-West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) must be fired immediately and replaced by persons who are competent enough to ensure delivery of quality health care to the population.  This was the declaration yesterday from former Junior Health Minister, Dr Fuad Khan. In a newspaper report yesterday former NWRHA vice-president (quality) Jenny Gobin alleged that she did not have the “tools” to do her job and she was being made a scapegoat regarding the outbreak of enterobacter bacteria at the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) last Septem-ber. Gobin was fired from her position after an internal investigation into the enterobacter outbreak. Khan admitted that while Gobin was one of several persons hired by the NWRHA while the United National Congress (UNC) was in power, no political considerations factored into any of those appointments.

He said when Gobin and these other individuals were hired, “they were good at a certain level” but were not managerial material. Khan explained that the idea at the time was “to have them work under competent people” until they could stand on their merit but this process was scuttled after the UNC was removed from Govern-ment and former Port-of-Spain Mayor Stevenson Sarjeant was appointed NWRHA chairman. The former minister claimed that Gobin and “a human resources person” persuaded Sarjeant to give them positions which they were not qualified to handle. Sarjeant was dismissed as NWRHA chairman following a fall-out with then Health Minister Colm Imbert. Khan claimed the persons who these individuals were hired to work under were slowly squeezed out through a series of political manoeuvres. Referring specifically to Gobin, Khan said it was not enough for her to say she did not have “the tools” to do her job and wondered whether Gobin requisitioned the Health Ministry to obtain those “tools.”

The UNC MP said Gobin would only have “a leg to stand on” in this matter if she did all which she was supposed to have done such as attending infection control committee meetings and taking an active role in setting policies. He stressed that the issue is bigger than Gobin and enterobacter at Mt Hope because it reveals major administrative deficiencies within the NWRHA. “All those managers in the NWRHA should have been fired and replaced by competent persons,” Khan declared. He recalled that as junior health minister one of his primary responsibilities was to transform the Mount Hope Medical Sciences Complex into the region’s premier tertiary health institution. Khan lamented that he was unable to do so because he was “forced down by a certain gentleman” who is still employed at the NWRHA. “The whole system needs to be changed. The health of the nation cannot come before politics,” the former minister said.