Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has is­sued con­do­lences on the death of for­mer Ja­maican prime min­is­ter Ed­ward Sea­ga.

Dr Row­ley, who is in The Nether­lands for meet­ings with en­er­gy com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment on Sea­ga's pass­ing:

"It was with a deep sense of sad­ness that I re­ceived the news to­day of the pass­ing of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica, Ed­ward Phillip George Sea­ga.

Sea­ga’s ser­vice to the peo­ple of Ja­maica and by ex­ten­sion the Caribbean, spanned sev­er­al decades. He be­gan his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer in 1959 when he was se­lect­ed by the founder of the Ja­maica Labour Par­ty (JLP), Sir Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante to serve in the Up­per House of the Ja­maican Par­lia­ment.

This Caribbean po­lit­i­cal stal­wart who was in­stru­men­tal in the draft­ing of the Ja­maican Con­sti­tu­tion, served as Ja­maica's fifth Prime Min­is­ter and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on two oc­ca­sions. This pe­ri­od of ser­vice spanned 43 years of ded­i­ca­tion to pub­lic ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly to the peo­ple of Ja­maica.

Hav­ing re­tired from ac­tive pol­i­tics, he was ap­point­ed an hon­orary dis­tin­guished fel­low at the pro­fes­so­r­i­al lev­el at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), and re­cent­ly served as Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy (UTech), Ja­maica.

This en­dur­ing lega­cy re­mains the hall­mark of an out­stand­ing ar­chi­tect of the in­de­pen­dent Ja­maica.

On be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in this time of loss and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for a life of ser­vice, I ex­press sin­cer­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Ed­ward Sea­ga and to all the peo­ple of Ja­maica.

As Caribbean peo­ple while we are poor­er for his pass­ing we can take com­fort in be­ing rich­er for his un­stint­ing ded­i­ca­tion and ser­vice to all of us.

Prime Min­is­ter

Dr Kei­th Row­ley."