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The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) has con­firmed that an em­ploy­ee has been placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion—but did not name the in­di­vid­ual or spec­i­fy the cir­cum­stances prompt­ing the ac­tion.

How­ev­er, the em­ploy­ee is un­der­stood to be promi­nent physi­cian Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh. His sus­pen­sion fol­lows the pub­li­ca­tion of a sharply satir­i­cal opin­ion col­umn in the Trinidad & To­ba­go Guardian last Fri­day, ti­tled The Em­per­or’s New Hos­pi­tal.

In a re­lease is­sued Sun­day morn­ing, the SWRHA said, “An em­ploy­ee has pro­ceed­ed on leave to fa­cil­i­tate an in­ter­nal, fair and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a mat­ter of com­pli­ance with the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s gov­ern­ing law un­der the RHA Code of Con­duct and the rel­e­vant poli­cies. This de­ci­sion was made in ac­cor­dance with our com­mit­ment to up­hold­ing the high­est stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and in­tegri­ty.”