Raj Sooknanan, the father of the baby boy who was born to Kaimattie Sooknanan, who died on Saturday as she was being transferred from the New Amsterdam Hospital to Georgetown, is still awaiting the discharge of his child from the institution.
Sooknanan told this newspaper yesterday that he was hoping to take his son with him so that he could observe the last rites for his mother who will be cremated today according to Hindu customs.
The man said he travelled all the way from Berbice to the hospital with his identification card to collect his child but was told by nurses that he had to produce a copy of his marriage certificate before they release the child to him. He added that he was told previously that the only document needed was his identification card but upon his arrival at the hospital he was greeted with the marriage certificate requirement.
He said “when I went to the hospital they said me gah bring me marriage certificate so now me gah go till a Berbice and come back…me bin want the baby to do the religious wuk tomorrow for she but now dem seh me can’t get de baby.”
Sooknanan also noted that his seven-year-old daughter is expecting the arrival of her brother and even telephoned him while he was in Georgetown to find out if her brother would be home. He said “I don’t know what to tell her and my sister them now cause dem de expecting the baby.”
As Sooknanan awaits the discharge of his child, he stated that a woman, who pretended to be his wife’s mother, had been visiting his child at the hospital.
He stated that the woman told hospital officials that she came to collect the child because she is his grandmother.
Sooknanan said that when he turned up at the hospital with his wife’s real mother, he was asked by the nurses how many mothers his wife had. He said ‘’the woman ah go and play with me baby seh she a me wife mudda.” He is therefore asking that his child be discharged to him only.
Kaimattie, the former teacher of Number 68 Village, Corentyne, Berbice, died because of haemorrhaging after she delivered a healthy baby boy by c-section at the New Amsterdam Hospital on Friday. She died as she was being transferred without her family’s knowledge to the Georgetown Hospital.
Up to yesterday, health officials were still to make contact with her husband regarding her death.
