Ch­agua­nas West MP, Jack Warn­er, ex­pressed dis­gust last night that Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed's name was left out of the list of per­sons for this year's In­de­pen­dence Day awards. Speak­ing dur­ing an in­de­pen­dence cer­e­mo­ny and fire­works dis­play at the Di­vali Na­gar site, Ch­agua­nas, Warn­er said all was not lost, as he would ho­n­our the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. Warn­er added, "Less than 15 per cent of East In­di­an sons and daugh­ters of our soil have re­ceived the top ac­co­lades in a coun­try where racial equal­i­ty is sup­posed to be the pre­cur­sor to the bless­ings we re­ceive as a na­tion.

"This year will be no dif­fer­ent. In fact, this year is worse, when you con­sid­er that one of our dis­tin­guished In­di­an sons of the soil, Ka­malaud­din Mo­hammed, has been de­nied a na­tion­al award." Warn­er said Ka­mal was al­so de­nied an award dur­ing the PNM's 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions in 2006. "But that, as wrong as it was, was a par­ty af­fair. To­day's re­jec­tion of Ka­mal is a na­tion­al af­fair. And so tonight, I say to all of you that this func­tion is be­ing or­gan­ised in ho­n­our of Ka­malaud­din Mo­hammed, a man who spent some 56 years of his life ded­i­cat­ed to the ser­vice of the peo­ple of this coun­try, but I will do more than that.

"I will meet with the fam­i­ly and rel­a­tives of Ka­mal, as well as some el­ders of the Mus­lim faith, to dis­cuss and come up with a pro­pos­al fit­ting to ho­n­our Ka­mal. This will be done im­me­di­ate­ly. "In the mean­time, in this month of Ra­mad­han, I want to ad­vise Ka­mal that to be ho­n­oured by a mere man is in­signif­i­cant. True recog­ni­tion comes on­ly from the Supreme Be­ing. "It is, there­fore, my hope that Charch re­mains in good health, and that his holy month of Ra­mad­han is filled with di­vine bless­ings for him and all the mem­bers of his fam­i­ly." The Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent said an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion was still to be ap­point­ed, the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act was abused, and the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion was in lim­bo. He said dur­ing the last 47 years, there was mass dis­crim­i­na­tion, in­equity and in­equal­i­ty from the gov­ern­ment. He al­so in­clud­ed the UNC, when that par­ty was in pow­er.