Mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, gui­tarist and cre­ator of the band Im­ij and Com­pa­ny (orig­i­nal­ly known as Sec­ond Im­ij), Joey Ng Wai, 54, has died af­ter bat­tling pneu­mo­nia.

Ng Wai had been hos­pi­talised on De­cem­ber 29, 2024 at the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and had been re­ceiv­ing an out­pour­ing of love and prayers from fam­i­ly and well­wish­ers be­fore he suc­cumbed to his ill­ness yes­ter­day evening.

His sis­ter Sharon Ng Wai-Pan­tin had in ear­ly Jan­u­ary re­vealed that Ng Wai came down with the flu and had tried to treat it at his Mar­aval home where he lived alone, but to no avail.

She said he al­so suf­fered from sleep ap­nea, which re­sult­ed in his breath­ing stop­ping and restart­ing re­peat­ed­ly dur­ing sleep.

Doc­tors had said that Ng Wai’s car­bon monox­ide lev­els were sig­nif­i­cant­ly above healthy lev­els which af­fect­ed his lungs.

The fam­i­ly had asked the coun­try to pray for his heal­ing, as he was se­dat­ed dur­ing his stay at hos­pi­tal.

Ng Wai’s mu­si­cal ca­reer al­so saw him play for oth­er bands, in­clud­ing Zoo and Fran­tic.

Among those mourn­ing his death yes­ter­day evening was founder and CEO of Ros­al Mu­sic, Roger Sal­loum, who wrote on Ng Wai’s Face­book page, “It is with great sad­ness to hear that we’ve lost a friend and fel­low mu­si­cian Joey Ng Wai. The mu­sic fra­ter­ni­ty has lost a gem. He fought a great bat­tle, but God de­cid­ed what was best un­der these very dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. Joey was not on­ly a gift­ed mu­si­cian, but a won­der­ful soul whose laugh­ter, per­son­al­i­ty and spir­it up­lift­ed us all. His lega­cy will live in the hearts of all those who had the priv­i­lege of know­ing him. Rest in peace our dear friend.”