Gail Alexan­der

Name San Fer­nan­do Hill af­ter late for­mer sen­a­tor and San Fer­nan­do may­or Dr Ro­mesh Mootoo.

That was the sug­ges­tion yes­ter­day from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, who was among those pay­ing trib­ute to Mootoo in the Up­per House.

A minute’s si­lence was al­so ob­served in re­mem­brance of the for­mer sen­a­tor, who died on De­cem­ber 9.

Re­flect­ing on the late politi­cian and med­ical doc­tor’s tenures as a mem­ber of the DLP and then the NAR, Deyals­ingh said Mootoo want­ed to trans­form San Fer­nan­do and was con­cerned about the en­vi­ron­ment. He stopped the dump­ing of waste in Em­ba­cadere and stopped quar­ry­ing, which had been de­stroy­ing the San Fer­nan­do Hill.

“Prob­a­bly, we might want to de­cide some­time in the fu­ture to name this hill af­ter him,” said De­laysingh, who al­so told the Sen­ate Mootoo had a dream of San Fer­nan­do’s wa­ter­front be­com­ing a place for peo­ple to view the Gulf of Paria.

He said Mootoo would be proud of San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi’s ef­fort on the wa­ter­front project. He added that Mootoo was a stan­dard bear­er in the med­ical field and the epit­o­me of what a doc­tor should be, as he had treat­ed three gen­er­a­tions of pa­tients, many of them for free.

Deyals­ingh said one 70-year-old pa­tient trav­elled to San Fer­nan­do from St James for med­ical at­ten­tion be­cause Mootoo treat­ed his “ill­ness­es and his soul.”

Al­so pay­ing trib­ute was Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, him­self a for­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or, who said Mootoo “was the true em­bod­i­ment of a man com­mit­ted to serv­ing his coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly in San Fer­nan­do.”

Ho­sein re­called an in­ci­dent when Mootoo con­test­ed a lo­cal gov­ern­ment seat against his fa­ther. While dri­ving dur­ing cam­paign­ing, Ho­sein’s car be­gan smok­ing.

“I dis­con­nect­ed the wire and got burnt. Dr Mootoo, who was cam­paign­ing next door, came out and tend­ed to my hand. He was a man of true com­pas­sion, a true pa­tri­ot,” he said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark said Mootoo was “an out­stand­ing son of the soil, a na­tion­al fig­ure mak­ing ster­ling con­tri­bu­tions to pol­i­tics and med­i­cine and firm­ly root­ed in San Fer­nan­do.”

Mark added: “Out­side of pol­i­tics, he left his mark al­so by es­tab­lish­ing Sur­gi Med Med­ical Cen­tre. He was an ab­solute­ly beau­ti­ful hu­man be­ing, charis­mat­ic, in­tel­li­gent, flam­boy­ant and able to bring these qual­i­ties to his med­ical prac­tice and pol­i­tics.”

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo said she at­tend­ed school with Mootoo’s daugh­ter from pri­ma­ry lev­el up. She added that for all of Mootoo’s grav­i­tas, he was an ex­cep­tion­al­ly easy-go­ing per­son with a po­lit­i­cal style un­marred by an­i­mos­i­ty.

“We’ll do well to bring back the old-time days,” said Kan­ga­loo, who laud­ed Mootoo as a good and suc­cess­ful pub­lic ser­vant. She said his abil­i­ty to treat with peo­ple at the lev­el of the heart was one of his most en­dear­ing traits.