Six new In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are ex­pect­ed to be sworn in on Tues­day af­ter be­ing hand-picked by Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Weekes, who was elect­ed in­to of­fice in March, re­tained the ser­vices of Sen­a­tors Sophia Chote, Paul Richards and Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh.

She thanked the for­mer sen­a­tors — David Small, Ian Roach, Stephen Creese, Melis­sa Ramkissoon, Jen­nifer Raf­foul and Tau­rel Shrikissoon and Dhanyshar Ma­habir — for their ser­vice.

In a state­ment on Fri­day, the Pres­i­dent said she was "sat­is­fied that her ap­point­ments have met the stric­tures stip­u­lat­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion: “nine shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent in his dis­cre­tion from out­stand­ing per­sons from eco­nom­ic or so­cial or com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er ma­jor fields of en­deav­our.”

The six new Sen­a­tors are:

Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye is an At­tor­ney-at-Law and hold­er of a Mas­ter of Laws de­gree with spe­cial­i­sa­tion in Fam­i­ly Law. She was for­mer­ly a teacher hav­ing ob­tained her Teacher’s Diplo­ma in 1970. She is al­so qual­i­fied in Restora­tive Prac­tices. She has had con­sul­tan­cies with Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion for Fem­i­nist Re­search and Ac­tion (CAFRA) as well as with sev­er­al re­gion­al of­fices of UNICEF in­clud­ing Do­mini­ca, Guyana and the OECS on the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child and Ju­ve­nile Jus­tice. She has pre­sent­ed pa­pers in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly on Gen­der and Child is­sues.

Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine is an Econ­o­mist with a fo­cus on Trade and De­vel­op­ment. She holds an MSc in Eco­nom­ics with Dis­tinc­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. A 2006 Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship win­ner, De­onar­ine has been a re­search con­sul­tant with the IDB since June 2015 where she co-au­thored the IDB Group Coun­try Strat­e­gy 2016-2020 to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in erad­i­cat­ing con­straints that hin­der eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and lead­ing the coun­try to the road of pros­per­i­ty and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

An­tho­ny Vieira is an At­tor­ney-at-Law and Al­ter­na­tive Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion prac­ti­tion­er. He was a for­mer mem­ber of the In­de­pen­dent Bench 2013-2015 when he served as the Chair­man of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions and Ser­vice Com­mis­sions. Vieira has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­view on draft­ing of leg­is­la­tion in­clud­ing the Copy­right Bill 1996 and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Bill 2000. He is the Chair­man of Am­Cham Gov­er­nance Com­mit­tee treat­ing with trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and good gov­er­nance.

Char­rise Seep­er­sad is a Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant with a Mas­ters of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion. From 2007, she has been the Busi­ness Man­ag­er at JD Sel­l­i­er & Com­pa­ny where she par­tic­i­pates in strate­gic plan­ning for the firm and man­ages its day to day op­er­a­tions in­clud­ing Prop­er­ty & Fa­cil­i­ties Man­age­ment, OSH Com­pli­ance, In­sur­ance and oth­er ser­vices. Seep­er­sad was pre­vi­ous­ly a pri­vate prac­ti­tion­er pro­vid­ing man­age­ment con­sul­tant ser­vices to clients in­clud­ing busi­ness­es in the In­te­grat­ed Re­sort De­vel­op­ment, Fi­nan­cial, Sports and En­ter­tain­ment sec­tors.

De­oroop Teemal is a Civ­il & Struc­tur­al En­gi­neer and Project Man­ag­er with 37 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence. His ex­per­tise is in Project Man­age­ment, Con­tract Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Con­struc­tion Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Wa­ter and Waste­water En­gi­neer­ing. Teemal’s clients have in­clud­ed the Min­istry of Works, NIPDEC, WASA and Gas­par Grande Wa­ter Sup­ply. He is the Prin­ci­pal of Team En­gi­neer­ing Sys­tems Lim­it­ed and is the Chair­man of Di­vali Na­gar and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC).

Dr. Maria Dil­lon-Re­my is a med­ical doc­tor spe­cial­is­ing in pae­di­atrics born, bred and prac­tis­ing in To­ba­go. She al­so holds a Mas­ters in Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al Lead­er­ship. She is a Past Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and a Mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the NGO, Fam­i­ly Life To­ba­go. Dil­lon-Re­my worked from 1988 – 2012 in the Pub­lic Health Sec­tor in­clud­ing the Scar­bor­ough, San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tals.