DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has con­firmed that it spent a “sig­nif­i­cant” sum to host the state fu­ner­al for late for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day.

This was dis­closed by Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, just ahead of the fu­ner­al at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

“There’s been some sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­ture in­volved but, as al­ways, we’ve sought to be as fru­gal as pos­si­ble while at the same time en­sur­ing that qual­i­ty is ob­vi­ous and ev­i­dent at every step of the way. So, the bills will be tab­u­lat­ed and shared,” Browne said.

Asked about a ball­park fig­ure, the min­is­ter said it was a bit pre­ma­ture to say. How­ev­er, he clar­i­fied that the State had been in­volved in every as­pect of Pan­day’s late-stage med­ical treat­ment and fu­ner­al.

“The repa­tri­a­tion was con­duct­ed quite well with the as­sis­tance of our mis­sion in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, and step by step we’ve done every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that the Pan­day fam­i­ly feels ac­knowl­edged, feels sat­is­fied and has been part of the process every step of the way, and bear in mind the Gov­ern­ment and Trinidad and To­ba­go was al­so very much in­volved in the med­ical treat­ment, in the air am­bu­lance trans­port of Mr Pan­day to Flori­da in the first place.

“His med­ical care there, his repa­tri­a­tion and this is not as a favour, it’s the right thing to do in these cir­cum­stances,” he said.

Al­though there have been re­peat­ed calls from var­i­ous cross-sec­tions of so­ci­ety for Pan­day to be ho­n­oured, Browne said this was not an im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty. He said the fo­cus had been on en­sur­ing that the pro­ceed­ings around the state fu­ner­al were of the high­est stan­dard and qual­i­ty.

“I have not paid much at­ten­tion to those oth­er con­ver­sa­tions. There will be a time for that as we fol­low up,” he said.

Con­sid­er­ing it was the first state fu­ner­al un­der Hin­du rites, Browne said the plan­ning process was un­der­tak­en with re­spect, love, ac­knowl­edge­ment of ser­vice and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“I have to tell you, work­ing with the Pan­day fam­i­ly and with Mick­ela, in par­tic­u­lar, has been very easy and the con­nec­tion has been strong. All re­volve around re­spect and due re­gard for a life of ser­vice and to en­sure that the na­tion is able to say good­bye in a man­ner be­fit­ting of his stature,” he said.

Pan­day was flown to Flori­da for med­ical treat­ment on De­cem­ber 12 af­ter suf­fer­ing from breath­ing-re­lat­ed is­sues. He passed away on Jan­u­ary 1 and his body was repa­tri­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 3.