GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar

@guardian.co.tt

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is in mourn­ing fol­low­ing the pass­ing of beloved in­dus­try gi­ant Churchill Azad Akaloo, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sheik Lisha Ltd, who passed away on Fri­day night.

He is re­mem­bered as a true trail­blaz­er, a ded­i­cat­ed phil­an­thropist and an icon of the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Akaloo, 82, died af­ter ail­ing for some time.

He led the Cunu­pia-based Sheik Lisha Ltd—orig­i­nal­ly found­ed as a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness in the 1950s—trans­form­ing it in­to one of the coun­try’s most promi­nent man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors, known for pro­duc­ing flour, ver­mi­cel­li, split peas pow­der, cur­ry pow­der and pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als.

Re­flect­ing on the loss, Ramesh Ramdeen, CEO of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), de­scribed Akaloo’s lega­cy as ex­tra­or­di­nary and en­dur­ing, not­ing that Sheik Lisha was named TTMA Medi­um Man­u­fac­tur­er of the Year 2021, re­flect­ing the com­pa­ny’s con­tin­ued growth, re­silience and adapt­abil­i­ty.

“He is a for­mer re­cip­i­ent of the TTMA Life­time Achieve­ment Award and that in it­self speaks to the fact that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go recog­nised him as an icon of in­dus­try.

“What he has achieved, both in terms of in­dus­try and sup­port for gov­er­nance, in­dus­try, and the TTMA, is mon­u­men­tal. He was a per­son who moved the in­dus­try that he’s in­volved in, which is the pro­duc­tion of flour and all those prod­ucts that they pro­duce, to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el,” Ramdeen said.

Ramdeen high­light­ed Akaloo’s vi­tal role in boost­ing the na­tion­al econ­o­my, po­si­tion­ing his en­ter­prise as a ma­jor ex­porter and eco­nom­ic dri­ver. Un­der Akaloo’s lead­er­ship, he said, the com­pa­ny has grown to be­come one of the largest man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors in the re­gion, serv­ing the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca and Cana­da.

 “He be­came a sig­nif­i­cant earn­er of for­eign ex­change in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He did ex­treme­ly well for him­self, and he raised the bar for the sec­tor that he be­longed to,” Ramdeen not­ed.

Trib­utes al­so poured in from Ki­ran Singh, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC).

“He will be re­mem­bered as the quin­tes­sen­tial phil­an­thropic busi­ness­man, as­sist­ing those not on­ly in his com­mu­ni­ty but through­out the coun­try. He was seen as as­sist­ing those in cul­ture and the arts,” he shared.

“His con­tri­bu­tion to com­mu­ni­ty and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ser­vice was well not­ed some years ago when he re­ceived a num­ber of Cuban refugees at his own ex­pense and sup­port­ed them while they await­ed fur­ther as­sis­tance from the state,” Singh added.

The TTMA added that Akaloo’s lega­cy would live on through the peo­ple he em­ployed, the busi­ness­es he sup­plied, the in­dus­try he helped build, and the gen­er­a­tions of his fam­i­ly who con­tin­ue the Sheik Lisha sto­ry.

In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, the Cunu­pia Busi­ness Cham­ber fur­ther de­scribed Akaloo as a “true vi­sion­ary, a pi­o­neer of our lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, and a stead­fast sup­port­er of the cham­ber.”

It added that Akaloo built a last­ing lega­cy from the ground up, pro­vid­ed liveli­hoods for count­less fam­i­lies, and con­tributed im­mense­ly to the his­to­ry and de­vel­op­ment of Cunu­pia.