Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union has praised the con­tri­bu­tion of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day. Pan­day died on Mon­day at the age of 90.

“His con­tri­bu­tion to the labour move­ment and his strug­gles on be­half of Sug­ar Work­ers and the work­ing class, not on­ly pro­duced bet­ter terms and con­di­tions for work­ers as a whole but laid the foun­da­tion for the chil­dren of sug­ar work­ers to en­joy a much bet­ter life than their par­ents ever did,” the union said in a state­ment.

It went fur­ther in adding that Pan­day had a deep­er im­pact of the In­do-Trinida­di­an so­ci­ety, say­ing, “Mr. Pan­day’s strug­gles in labour and the po­lit­i­cal realm broke the psy­cho­log­i­cal chains that kept many de­scen­dants of for­mer In­den­tures in men­tal bondage al­ways be­liev­ing them­selves to be sec­ond-class cit­i­zens. In fact, his strug­gles made many In­do Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans fi­nal­ly ac­cept Trinidad and To­ba­go as their home and as their moth­er land.”

The state­ment added that Pan­day was stead­fast in his re­li­gious be­lief, “It must nev­er be for­got­ten that it was Bas­deo Pan­day who took Hin­duism in­to Par­lia­ment, the Pres­i­dents House and the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence. That Pan­day, was nev­er afraid to be a Hin­du at a time it was per­ceived that an In­do Prime Min­is­ter much less a Hin­du Prime Min­is­ter could ever be a re­al­i­ty. For that he will nev­er be for­got­ten.”