The United National Congress (UNC) said former Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh has been appointed as temporary senator.
The UNC said in a statement that he has been appointed to serve in the Upper House of Parliament today.
The UNC said Dr Gopeesingh served as Caroni East MP from 2007-2020 and was also education minister during the Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration from 2010-2015.
The UNC said Dr Gopeesingh was awarded the Chaconia Gold Medal in 1999 for his contribution to medicine and public service and is also a former senior UWL Lecturer, Dean of the UWI Medical School and former national cricketer.
Dr Gopeesingh served as a senator from 2001-2007, and in 2020 announced his retirement from representative politics.
The UNC said during his tenure as education minister Dr Gopeesingh oversaw the construction of over 100 primary and secondary schools, as well as ECCE centres, and enabled Trinidad and Tobago to become of the of first countries in the world to have achieved the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals of Universal Early Childhood Care and Education.
The UNC said in January 2020, Dr Gopeesingh was “the first public official to warn of the serious threat that the then nascent Covid-19 pandemic posed to our country when he moved a motion in the Lower House to have it debated as a matter of urgent public importance, which was disallowed”.
The party said since then, he has publicly spoken out consistently on the many serious issues surrounding the Government’s handling COVID-19 pandemic locally.
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