Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar came from hum­ble be­gin­nings. She was born in the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Siparia on April 22, 1952.

For close to a decade, she served as the Siparia MP, hav­ing won three con­sec­u­tive gen­er­al elec­tions. On Mon­day night, she made his­to­ry as thou­sands of sup­port­ers from across the coun­try gath­ered at Rien­zi Com­plex to con­grat­u­late her as T&T's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter. Dur­ing her cam­paign, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her rur­al up­bring­ing in­stilled in her a de­vo­tion to serve peo­ple to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of the poor and des­ti­tute. Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­gan her ed­u­ca­tion at the Mo­hess Road Hin­du School in 1957. She lat­er at­tend­ed the Erin Road Pres­by­ter­ian School and Siparia Union Pres­by­ter­ian School. She ob­tained her sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion at the Iere High School. Af­ter ob­tain­ing her qual­i­fi­ca­tions, she lat­er moved to Nor­wood Tech­ni­cal Col­lege, Lon­don, to be­gin her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and there­after the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies at Mona and then Cave Hill in Bar­ba­dos. Per­sad-Bisses­sar holds a Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree (Hons), a Bach­e­lor of Laws (Hons) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and a Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion.

She pur­sued stud­ies in the Mas­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and has served as a high school teacher, both in T&T and in Ja­maica. Hav­ing com­plet­ed her Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion, she was then award­ed a Full­bright Schol­ar­ship to at­tend New York's Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty to do re­search lead­ing to a PhD but she opt­ed to study law in­stead. �At the ten­der age of 25, she be­came one of the youngest uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers at UWI, Mona Cam­pus, hav­ing worked in the De­part­ment of Lan­guage and Lin­guis­tics, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­celled at her law stud­ies and was named the top stu­dent at her grad­u­a­tion from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, win­ning prizes for the Most Out­stand­ing Stu­dent and the Best Over­all Per­for­mance.

At present, she is pur­su­ing IOB's Ex­ec­u­tive MBA pro­gramme and has com­plet­ed all ex­ams gain­ing 12 As and will com­plete the pro­gramme with a practicum lat­er this year. In her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has a num­ber of firsts. She was the first woman to act as Prime Min­is­ter of T&T. She was al­so the first woman to be ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs. She was the first woman deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC and the first woman Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Dur­ing her two-year oc­cu­pa­tion of the of­fice of the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was suc­cess­ful in es­tab­lish­ing uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, re­mov­ing the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion, re­plac­ing it with the more mod­ern Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment SEA, and es­tab­lish­ing some 32 new sec­ondary schools in the coun­try.