Gail Alexan­der

The head of San Juan’s Nur- e-Is­lam Masjid, Imam Sher­az Ali yes­ter­day re­placed late Min­is­ter Franklin Khan as a PNM Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor.

Ali, who has roots in Siparia, is al­so chair­man of the Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go group.

Ali took the oath of of­fice as a Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. This was to fill the va­can­cy which arose fol­low­ing Khan’s death.

Khan was En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment’s Sen­ate leader. He died on April 17 at his Mo­ka, Mar­aval home.

An au­top­sy re­vealed he had a cal­ci­fied cyst on his heart curb­ing blood flow to the or­gan. An of­fi­cial fu­ner­al is be­ing planned for next month when Khan’s daugh­ter– who ar­rived from over­seas last week–emerges from quar­an­tine. A church ser­vice in north Trinidad will be fol­lowed by Khan’s bur­ial at Ma­yaro’s Radix ceme­tery .

On Ali’s ap­point­ment, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Clarence Ramb­harat stat­ed: “Sen­a­tor Ali is cur­rent­ly a Board Mem­ber at the Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny. He’s an agri­cul­tur­ist by pro­fes­sion, I‘ve known him since we at­tend­ed UWI at the same time. His ap­point­ment is a tremen­dous as­set to the Sen­ate and to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.”

Ali is an alum­nus of Iere High School, Siparia; Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do; and San Fer­nan­do Sec­ondary School.

Flu­ent in Eng­lish and Ara­bic, he’s a UWI grad­u­ate with a BSc in Agri­cul­ture, BSc in Ara­bic/Is­lam­ic Stud­ies and MSc in Food Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.

He cur­rent­ly serves as the Di­rec­tor of Ha­laal Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Sec­tion of Darul Uloom T&T Lim­it­ed. Ali is own­er/man­ag­er of Deli De­lights Food Cater­ers and founder of the Foun­da­tion for Is­lam­ic Re­lief, Sup­port and Train­ing.

Ali was a di­rec­tor, Ca­roni Green Ltd (2013 to 2015), for­mer di­rec­tor of Mus­lim Cred­it Union Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd , for­mer di­rec­tor at Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Ltd and di­rec­tor of Darul Aman Home for Chil­dren.