The fam­i­ly of the late Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Fazal Karim, has hailed “the epit­o­me of a ser­vant of the peo­ple” who ded­i­cat­ed his life to em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens of all ages through ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing.

In a state­ment, the fam­i­ly said, “He was es­pe­cial­ly pas­sion­ate about el­e­vat­ing the sta­tus and recog­ni­tion of vo­ca­tion­al skills and worked tire­less­ly to­wards the “par­i­ty of es­teem” of the sec­tor, en­vi­sion­ing and pi­o­neer­ing the Caribbean Vo­ca­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tion (CVQ) through CXC, the Work­force As­sess­ment Cen­tres, and many oth­er in­no­v­a­tive ini­tia­tives to pro­vide wide­spread ac­cess to vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing.”

The fam­i­ly went fur­ther in adding, “As an ad­min­is­tra­tor, ed­u­ca­tor and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist, he pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed the lives of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple across the re­gion, con­stant­ly cre­at­ing new pro­grammes and projects to help peo­ple find path­ways to em­ploy­ment and ad­vance­ment, even while serv­ing as an MP in Op­po­si­tion.”

Karim would have worked with in­sti­tu­tions such as UWI, UTT, COSTAATT, MIC, NESC and YTEPP.

He served as the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing from May 2010 to Sep­tem­ber 2015, and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the Con­stituen­cy of Ch­agua­nas East from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Au­gust 2020, the CEO of the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency from 1999 – 2007, the CEO of YTEPP from 1997 – 1999, a Di­rec­tor and Board Mem­ber of sev­er­al state agen­cies, co­or­di­na­tor of the UWI School of Con­tin­u­ing stud­ies, lec­tur­er and teacher for many years.