2 docs sue UWI over exams

UWI campus registry admitted to mixing up the ID numbers of Dr Enal Maharaj and Dr Varune Rampersad which recorded them as having failed their final psychiatry examination after four years of study.

When the two doctors sought to clarify their marks, they were instructed to sit another examination, but it resulted in UWI informing them that apart from Professor Gerard Hutchinson, two other examiners should have been present at the exams. Hutchinson is the Caribbean’s foremost lecturer in psychiatry and heads the psychiatry programme at UWI.

The doctors list their woes in a pre-action protocol letter sent by the law firm Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Co to UWI’s registry. Maharaj, 32, and Rampersad, 31, wrote the Doctor of Medicine finals in May 2013. Maharaj was informed he passed the written and oral exams. However, in the clinical examinations, he failed by one percent.

Maharaj and Rampersad queried their results, pointing out a number of discrepancies, including the mixing up of their student numbers and that some marks were wrongly assigned to them as a result. Professor Clement Iton (campus registrar) wrote to Professor Wayne Hunte (pro Vice Chancellor), recommending that Maharaj and Rampersad be given oral examinations so they could have graduated in October 2013. Iton stated in part, “The claimants presented a fulsome submission supported by adequate documentary statements at the meeting, and that he made substantial points which included that there were mix-ups in their student numbers and some marks were wrongly assigned.” In an email correspondence, Maharaj and Rampersad were asked by UWI to furnish their examination ID numbers in order to clarify the mix-up. They did but never got a reply. Maharaj and Rampersad were informed they would be allowed to retake the clinical and oral examinations in 2014, to facilitate their graduation in September.

They did the examinations on September 12, conducted by Hutchinson and Dr James Bratt and Maharaj and Rampersad were informed by Hutchinson that they had passed.

Still, the doctors did not graduate with their Doctor of Medicine (psychiatry).

Instead, in October of that year, the doctors were informed there were queries from the Jamaican campus about the qualifications of the examiners. They were informed, the pre-action protocol stated, that they would have to re-do the oral exams. That was in December, 2014, and, according to correspondence attached to the pre-action protocol letter, Maharaj and Rampersad were informed the matter would be resolved by January 2015.

Maharaj and Rampersad, who work with the South-West Regional Health Authority, said they checked with UWI almost weekly, and up to yesterday, but no one could give any answer as to when they would redo the oral examination.

Maharaj’s law firm is contending that since 2014, the doctors were informed they had passed and were waiting to graduate, adding the delay amounts to a procedural and substantive benefit to the doctors.