For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Wen­dell Mot­t­ley has re­ceived the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT).

Mot­t­ley, al­so a for­mer dou­ble Olympic medal­list who has an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and a Mas­ters in Eco­nom­ics from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, was the on­ly per­son to be con­ferred with the coun­try’s top na­tion­al award by Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Mot­t­ley’s ca­reer in­clud­ed sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ments, in­clud­ing two medals at the 1964 Olympics, Japan and two medals at the 1966 British Com­mon­wealth Games in Ja­maica.

Af­ter his re­tire­ment from ath­let­ics, Mot­t­ley was elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 1981 to 1986, serv­ing as Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and lat­er as Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, Com­merce and Con­sumer Af­fairs.

He was elect­ed for an­oth­er term in 1991 and served as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance from 1991 to 1995.

Mot­t­ley’s long and dis­tin­guished ca­reer al­so in­clud­ed serv­ing on a num­ber of boards, in­clud­ing the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) as its chair­man. One of Mot­t­ley’s team­mates from the 1964 Olympics, Kent Bernard, was al­so award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) for his con­tri­bu­tion to sports.

(See list of awardees on Page A17)

Ed­i­to­r­i­al ex­ec­u­tive Jones P Madeira was al­so among those award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) for long and mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice to T&T. Con­tact­ed on the achieve­ment, Madeira ded­i­cat­ed the award to his home­town of Ari­ma.

“I am nat­u­ral­ly over­whelmed by the recog­ni­tion. I re­gard it as per­haps the pin­na­cle of a ca­reer that has spanned five decades and per­haps a lit­tle more be­hind it,” he said.

“I have been in all as­pects of me­dia and even in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The work was hard but there was al­so a good group of peo­ple to back you up. It al­so feels great that your coun­try al­so recog­nis­es your work.”

He added that he hoped this award will in­spire oth­er pro­fes­sion­als in the field of jour­nal­ism.

An­oth­er me­dia prac­ti­tion­er, Dr Kris Ram­per­sad, free­lance writer, pro­duc­er and jour­nal­ist who was once the ed­i­tor of the Sun­day Guardian, was award­ed the Medal for the De­vel­op­ment of Women (Gold) for out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of women’s rights and is­sues in T&T.

Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, a fam­i­ly doc­tor and psy­chi­a­trist, al­so re­ceived the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold). He said he was ho­n­oured to be cho­sen.

“It ac­tu­al­ly meant that some­one was re­al­ly notic­ing the lit­tle things I am do­ing to help oth­ers...ef­forts that I have made to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“But the re­al joy is not get­ting an award, it’s the joy that the peo­ple who you have helped will greet you and say, ‘Hey Doc you made a dif­fer­ence in my life. Thank you.’

“I am hop­ing that every per­son I helped will now ex­tend a hand to help some­one in some way,” Deyals­ingh said.