Committee set up to probe COVID deaths is powerless & ‘pappyshow’: Kamla Bissessar

Trinidad and Tobago: UNC leader Kamla Persad Bissessar, raising her voice for truth, pointed out that the committee set up by the Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to probe into the healthcare and COVID deaths is totally powerless and called it a ‘pappyshow‘. 

Bisssessar highlighted that the government’s committee failed in its task, and this action is taken to validate the incompetence & the mismanagement of the pandemic. 

She further reiterated her demand to constitute a commission of enquiry into the administration’s way of tackling the COVID-19 crisis, noting, it will bring the truth from behind the curtains and will assure ‘they have the legal power to subpoena witnesses and gather real data and evidence‘. 

‘It is too little, too late, a shameful failure on the part of the government in managing this crisis. While I have no issue with members of this committee, the deficiencies in their 7-day remit are glaring. It is very obvious that this committee is being set up to fail & to serve no other function than to – rubber-stamp Rowley’s failed COVID-19 management policies,” Kamla Bissessar added while pointing fingers at PM Rowley led-government.  

She then questioned how a committee that is hand-picked exclusively by Rowley and with no legal power to convene witnesses/documents possibly be expected to sufficiently survey the parallel health system, unearth potential problems, process deficiencies, malfeasance or malpractice? Adding that committee’s reference creates more suspicion and raises more questions than answers. 

Following her above statement, Kamla Bissessar added, “That Rowley has set a timeline of just 1 week for this committee to show its report and that he is not serious about finding any real answers or solutions. Indeed, he has prejudged outcome by his many public statements praising the health team’s performance, going so far as to say – the system is the best”.  

Bissessar then noted that the committee is having no mandate to determine the accuracy of data being collected or determine the Covid-19 testing levels within hospitals. She then highlighted that constituting a committee isn’t a serious attempt to save the lives of the people of Trinidad and Tobago, and rather it is a pappyshow committee, which is working with the purpose to safeguard PM Rowley.