Pe­ter Christo­pher

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Wen­dell Mot­t­ley will re­ceive the coun­try’s high­est award—the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go—on a lat­er date.

Mot­t­ley was ex­pect­ed to be the first awardee called at yes­ter­day’s evening Na­tion­al Awards at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain, but in­stead the awardees for the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) were an­nounced with vet­er­an me­dia prac­ti­tion­er Jones P Madeira be­ing the first re­cip­i­ent to be called to re­ceive his award.

“This mo­ment is hap­py for me but I am al­so ex­treme­ly hap­py for oth­er jour­nal­ists as well,” said Madeira af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny.

“It’s over­whelm­ing, it’s good to be recog­nised and this I think I ded­i­cate to all of jour­nal­ism in Trinidad & To­ba­go and the Caribbean,” said Madeira, who felt jour­nal­ism in the coun­try was in good hands and ex­pressed faith in the cur­rent crop of jour­nal­ists

Fol­low­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 49 of the 51 awards, it was an­nounced that 77- year-old Mot­t­ley, was un­avoid­ably ab­sent and as such will re­ceive his award on an­oth­er date to be sched­uled.

Mot­t­ley is re­port­ed­ly out the coun­try.

Re­tired bar­ris­ter at law Mah­mud Sul­tan Dean was the oth­er ab­sent awardee.

Teenag­er Sarah Estra­da was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Bronze) for gal­lantry for her role in sav­ing a drown­ing man at Blan­chisseuse in Ju­ly.

“It’s a great feel­ing, com­ing from a small vil­lage is hard­ly recog­nised by the State, it’s a great feel­ing to re­ceive a na­tion­al award, “ said Estra­da, who called for the State to de­vel­op her com­mu­ni­ty of Blan­chisseuse fur­ther.

The most re­cent­ly in­tro­duced award, the Medal for De­vel­op­ment of Women (Gold), was award­ed to writer, jour­nal­ist and ed­u­ca­tor, Dr Kr­ishen­daye Ram­per­sad.

She said while she was im­pressed by the group of awardees last night, more eq­ui­ty in terms of the num­ber of women should be award­ed.