Facing increasing criticisms including from Human Services Minister, Priya Manickchand, the George-town Public Hospital (GPHC) yesterday announced the firing of child sex convict Dr Vishwamintra Persaud and Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy admitted they erred in employing him.
“Dr. Vishwamintra Persaud is no longer working at GPHC. I apologise to all persons we have offended by the decision of the GPHC to offer employment to Dr. Persaud”, Ramsammy said in a statement last evening, hours after Manickchand again slammed the continued employment of Dr. Persaud. Ramsammy admitted that they erred in not ensuring that the doctor’s employment was in compliance with the Sexual Offences Act. Dr Persaud could not be reached fro comment yesterday.
“Whilst at the time we only considered the benefits of adding another experienced doctor to our roster at the GPHC, we could have been more careful in considering the circumstances,” the minister said, adding that the blame is entirely his. Ramsammy’s statement came hours after Manickchand told reporters that there is no place for Dr. Persaud in the medical profession where he would be a threat to the country’s children.
Dr Persaud pleaded guilty in the US to a charge of attempted course of sexual conduct against a child in 2008 and was sentenced to an eight-year order of protection, ten year probation and fined US$2500 among other fees. He sexually violated the child over a three year period and only stopped after she complained to an adult.
According to Dr. Ramsammy, the matter is now in the past and focus is now on the work at hand which is to provide everyone that visits the hospital with the best quality care.“We have learnt important and invaluable lessons from this experience,” the minister said adding that there are many very committed and dedicated health care providers and while those in the health sector try to do their best, unfortunately they make mistakes sometimes.
“As Minister of Health, it is my responsibility to ensure that in making certain decisions we have taken into consideration all relevant matters. It is clear that in this case we did not take into consideration the various implications of this case and clearly the provisions of the Sexual Offences Act were relevant. In so doing, we have offended many persons and I apologise on my behalf and on behalf of my ministry,” the minister said.
Ramsammy conceded that it is his responsibility to advise the GPHC that before employing anyone the Sexual Offences Act should be considered and he failed to offer that advice to the hospital and as such “the blame is entirely mine.”
He said that since the enactment of the Act, his ministry should have advised all the regulatory bodies that in considering registration and licensing of professionals, care must be taken that such persons are eligible for registration and licensing not only in accordance with the provisions of the relevant professional body law but also in accordance with the Act. “In this regards, I should have offered better advice to the medical council,” he said. “We have now taken action to advise all professional bodies under the Ministry of Health that registration and licensing should take into consideration the provisions of the Sexual Offences Act,” the minister restated.
Bothered
Earlier yesterday, Manickchand said she was bothered by the fact that the matter was still an ongoing one while describing statements made in a letter to the press by Director of Medical Services at the GPHC, Dr. Madan Rambarran as “most telling and very, very sad, very, very contradictory in his own words.” Dr Rambarran’s letter is published in today’s Stabroek News but was published in two other newspapers yesterday.
Manickchand said that the argument in the letter by Dr Rambarran, whom she said she respects as one who has given his services and life to Guyana, was flawed and contradictory. The minister pointed out that the letter calls for objectivity and balance but questioned how Dr Rambarran could have attained objectivity by only listening to the story presented by Dr Persaud before hiring him. “He doesn’t tell us that he heard from the little girl who was sexually interfered with, he doesn’t tell us he heard from her parents. He tells us he heard from the perpetrator, a sexual convict…,” the minister said.
In his letter, Dr. Rambarran said he was exposed to the decisions by the courts in the US and the Office of Professional Medical Conduct both of which, the minister pointed out, said the doctor is a threat to society and that he must not practice as a doctor. She also made reference to the medical director’s statement about a person being reformed after they would have served their sentence and that they should be treated like human beings, which she said was contradictory.
“I find the whole statement by Dr Rambarran very sad and very misinformed and very contradictory,” the minister emphasized. She pointed out that Dr. Persaud’s licence was revoked and he was told to reapply after three years.“The Georgetown Public Hospital acted as a court of appeal without any facts before them or any of the circumstances that these two bodies had and what they did was in effect by hiring him, overturned those two competent bodies who had evidence before them, who made their decisions based on the evidence before them…,” the minister said.
The minister said Dr Rambarran contradicted himself as he did not even wait for the doctor to be reformed but instead the GPHC decided whatever the doctor told them they believed and they hired them.
In his letter, Dr Rambarran noted that based on the positions of the various interests there seems to be no place for the doctor in Guyana and responding to this, the minister said that there is no place for the doctor where he is a threat to children. “In the quiet moments in my office I do believe we don’t have space for people like that, the Vishramintra types who … abuse children of this world … but publicly I believe we have space for him but he can’t work as a doctor. He can work in some other place where he is not going to come into contact with Guyana’s children and where we are not dooming those kids,” the minister said.
She pointed out that the children who seek medical treatment at the GPHC are usually the ones who are from poorer family backgrounds and who are at their most vulnerable state because they are ill. “We cannot expose them to this type of person who is really someone, who in another country was a predator, preyed on a young child for three years, according to the evidence of those bodies, and acted out on his perversion,” the minister said while adding that the doctor should be treated as a human being but as one who was convicted of a sexual offence against children.
Further, Manickchand said that the country’s laws are clear and the many statements made by the government have indicated that there is no tolerance for sexual abuse against children. “It is zero tolerance, we have no space for people like that, we will not encourage them, we are not going to be sorry for them, we are not going to tolerate them. And so yes we have a zero tolerance approach to that it is all or nothing, you are either somebody who does not abuse children or you are somebody who abuses children,” the minister said.
Apology
Further, Manickchand called for an apology from the GPHC and described Dr Rambarran’s questioning of what she did since the matter was made public as ”conceited” even as she made it clear that she has no jurisdiction over the hospital or the Medical Council of Guyana. However, the minister said that as soon as she learnt of the matter, she contacted both ministers of health and she was told by Dr Ramsammy that the doctor’s services would have been terminated and that the matter would have been referred to the medical council for them to address the breach of the medical practitioner’s act.
“In fact on Tuesday last I was specifically told by Dr Ramsammy that by the end of Tuesday last week, Dr Persaud would be no longer working at the Georgetown Hospital. I have not learnt that is not what happened and as far as I have been able to discern, he is still working there,” the minister said.
Manickchand, an attorney at law by profession, also offered some free advice for her colleague, Dr Ramsammy who was quoted in yesterday’s Kaieteur News as saying that there are a number of issues that have to be considered before terminating the services of the doctor as there are certain rules of employment and termination of services that must be followed.
Manickchand noted that the doctor was on probation which would have ended this month end and the 1997 Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act states that the employer or employee could terminate the employment for any reason and without notice. The minister said sighing was her first reaction when she read Dr Rambarran’s letter as she realized that there is still so much work and education to be done to inform people about the provisions of the sexual offences law and why they came into being. “This is an educated person we are speaking about, so I just sighed, almost exasperation, that we needed to educate even the educated and that it was going to be an uphill battle to try to change the culture of acceptance as it relates to sexual offences”, she said.
