‘I don’t know what this country would have done in pandemic without Roshan Parasram because he led that team of public servants in the Ministry of Health’ – Dr Keith Rowley
By Chantalé Fletcher
CHIEF Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram is being described as a citizen of “exemplary conduct and station.”
This according to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley on Tuesday night at a People’s National Movement (PNM) public meeting in Belmont.
During his address, he said, “I don’t know what this country would have done in pandemic without Roshan Parasram because he led that team of public servants in the Ministry of Health.”
Dr Rowley said intended to instruct Minister of Finance Colm Imbert to make a “separate and special payment to every member who works in the Ministry of Health.”
He said, “Y’all don’t understand what it means to be in a position of responsibility where death is the outcome, death is our portion, a virus that is killing millions of people around the world and it is your responsibility to make the call. And you buckle down and say there you are going to fight with the people of Trinidad and Tobago in the very room where the virus killing people, their families can’t come to them, but health officers in the room with them and handling them.”
Dr Rowley said he felt it on a personal level when the United States of America, one of the most powerful countries in the world, had persons dying from Covid-19 ike flies in New York had to use Hart Island for mass graves as refrigerated containers outside the hospitals were filled with dead bodies.
He said, “I felt it because I know down in Couva, there were people in those wards whose families were home, mother, uncle, cousin , brother working in that hospital. You’re not sure if they going to catch Covid and Covid going to kill people. I know that so I’m booking no object from anybody who tell me we can’t do that; we are going to do it because we can afford it.”
Dr Rowley said, “Our health service in the pandemic of 2021, our health service was there for all the people of T&T and we must be grateful people.”
“Many people in our country did not make it, and many people made it because we were fortunate to have in our health service a body and people for whom the occasion demanded and who stood in the breach for us,” he added.
