Basharat Ali loved T&T. And that love was not just a fleet­ing emo­tion or mean­ing­less words for Ali. It was some­thing that he put in­to ac­tion.

Ali’s jour­ney be­gan from “very hum­ble” be­gin­nings in Aran­juez, his broth­er-in-law and friend of over 50 years, Patrick Jadoo told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Af­fec­tion­ate­ly known as “Lit­tle”, Ali was one of 14 chil­dren born to a hard-work­ing farmer named Ameer and his wife Zo­ra.

Ali even­tu­al­ly en­tered St Mary’s Col­lege on a Gov­ern­ment Schol­ar­ship. And in 1952 he left T&T’s shores to pur­sue a de­gree in chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty, Eng­land, on a Shell in­ter­na­tion­al schol­ar­ship.

“It was amaz­ing that the com­mu­ni­ty of Aran­juez turned up at the Port of Port-of-Spain to bid him farewell,” Jadoo said.

At Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty, Ali grad­u­at­ed with Up­per Sec­ond Class ho­n­ours. It was at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty he met two peo­ple that would play an im­por­tant role in his life.

One was George Maxwell Richards who would, lat­er in life as pres­i­dent of T&T, ap­point Ali as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor. The oth­er was Joyce Headley, who was at the time pur­su­ing her ca­reer in op­tom­e­try.

Ali fell in love with Headley and on their re­turn to T&T got mar­ried at the St Joseph TML Mosque.

“Against all odds, some would have said at the time. But, they proved love con­quers all,” Jadoo said.

The cou­ple even­tu­al­ly had two daugh­ters Yas­min and Nazmeen.

Ali joined the Shell Com­pa­ny at Point Fortin as a ju­nior en­gi­neer.

From his first salary on­wards Ali fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ed his par­ents un­til they passed away.

He al­so looked af­ter the ed­u­ca­tion of his younger sib­lings.

“To­day, from a fam­i­ly of 14, four be­came teach­ers, three be­came bankers, one phar­ma­cist, one econ­o­mist, one air­craft me­chan­ic, one reg­is­tered nurse, one tai­lor, one seam­stress and, of course, one chem­i­cal en­gi­neer,” Jadoo said.

Jadoo said Ali was re­spon­si­ble for this out­come in many ways.

“He was al­ways gen­er­ous, giv­ing freely of his time and re­sources. Sim­ply put, he was a bene­fac­tor to many,” he said.

Jadoo said be­cause of Ali there are now at least four more en­gi­neers in the fam­i­ly.

At Shell, Ali even­tu­al­ly worked his way to the po­si­tion of chief tech­nol­o­gist.

He al­so lec­tured on a part-time ba­sis at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing.

In 1974, Ali be­came a mem­ber of the board at the T&T In­dus­tri­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

And, in 1975, he be­came a mem­ber of the board of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

“In 1975, chem­i­cal en­gi­neer Mr Basharat Ali, em­braced a lead­er­ship role as a mem­ber of NGC’s very first Board of Di­rec­tors. He was in­stru­men­tal in con­tribut­ing to de­ci­sions that ad­vanced the ex­pan­sion of NGC’s nat­ur­al gas pipeline net­work,” NGC stat­ed.

“Along with oth­er dis­tin­guished mem­bers of that board, Ali pro­vid­ed a foun­da­tion for NGC’s growth in­to a suc­cess­ful state en­ti­ty and, ul­ti­mate­ly, T&T’s emer­gence as a re­gion­al en­er­gy play­er,” it stat­ed.

On June 10, 2003 Ali first en­tered the T&T Par­lia­ment as a Tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor.

Six months lat­er he was ap­point­ed an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor by Richards.

NGC’s chair­man Con­rad Enill thanked Ali’s fam­i­ly for his con­tri­bu­tion both to the com­pa­ny and the Sen­ate.

“I knew him as a sen­a­tor and his con­tri­bu­tions were al­ways pos­i­tive and added val­ue to our de­lib­er­a­tions. He was very knowl­edge­able and his pres­ence was ap­pre­ci­at­ed,” Enill told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Ali’s tenure at the Sen­ate end­ed in 2012.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said while he did not know Ali per­son­al­ly his rep­u­ta­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor pre­ced­ed him.

“From what I have gath­ered Mr Ali con­tributed in a mean­ing­ful man­ner to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of our en­er­gy sec­tor and was recog­nised as an ex­pert in the field,” Young said.

In 2009 Ali was ho­n­oured as a pi­o­neer­ing hero for lead­er­ship in cel­e­bra­tion of 100 years of com­mer­cial oil pro­duc­tion in T&T.

In 2011 he was award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal Sil­ver for his long and mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice as a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer.

Dur­ing the last few years, Ali was bat­tling health is­sues.

He even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbed to them on Christ­mas Eve (De­cem­ber 24).

On Box­ing Day (De­cem­ber 26) Ali was laid to rest at the Aran­juez Mus­lim Ceme­tery.

Sad­ly one week lat­er Nazmeen al­so passed away.

“I ex­press con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly on his pass­ing and thank them for the sup­port they would have giv­en him as he served our na­tion through­out his adult life in nu­mer­ous ca­pac­i­ties cul­mi­nat­ing with his sen­a­tor­ship. It is sons and daugh­ters of the soil like Mr Ali who have helped our coun­try to de­vel­op and for this, as a cit­i­zen, I am per­son­al­ly grate­ful,” Young said.

“Mr Ali’s fam­i­ly should be proud of his achieve­ments and con­tri­bu­tions and he will be re­mem­bered,” he said.

The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the En­er­gy Cham­ber Dr Dax Dri­ver de­scribed Ali as a “stal­wart” of the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“The En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­tends sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Basharat Ali, a huge­ly re­spect­ed pro­fes­sion­al and stal­wart of the en­er­gy in­dus­try. The En­er­gy Cham­ber worked close­ly with him when he was an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and con­sult­ed with him fre­quent­ly and wide­ly on is­sues re­lat­ing to en­er­gy and re­lat­ed poli­cies,” Dri­ver said.

“He fre­quent­ly sought our views and opin­ions es­pe­cial­ly re­lat­ing to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) and he made many well-re­ceived con­tri­bu­tions in Sen­ate de­bates on en­er­gy pol­i­cy is­sues and on the EITI,” he said.

A Note from Cur­tis Williams, Lead Ed­i­tor, Busi­ness:

I al­so knew Mr Ali who from time to time would call me and talk to me about is­sues or ar­ti­cles I wrote in the news­pa­per on the en­er­gy sec­tor. At the time he was an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor in the Par­lia­ment of T&T and I was al­ways struck with his hu­mil­i­ty, open­ness to shar­ing all his knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence and guid­ing any­one who sought his help. I al­so want to ex­press my con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly.

T&T is a bet­ter place be­cause of peo­ple like Mr Ali.