CARISA LEE

Re­porter

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has con­firmed that for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day will be giv­en a State fu­ner­al.

Speak­ing to­day at the Prison Ser­vice's First Work­ing Day In­ter­faith Ser­vice at the Uni­ver­sal of Church of the King­dom of God, Broad­way, Port-of-Spain, Hinds said the gov­ern­ment reached out to Mr Pan­day's rel­a­tives about the State fund­ing his fu­ner­al, and the fam­i­ly has agreed to it.

"I join the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go Dr Row­ley in pay­ing re­spect­ful trib­ute to the life and the work and the con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go of Bas­deo Pan­day," he said.

Min­is­ter Hinds ex­plained that Mr Pan­day's body must first be brought back in­to this coun­try since he was abroad at the time of his death. He died at a hos­pi­tal in Jack­sonville Flori­da on Mon­day where had been seek­ing med­ical care.

"Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has a very crit­i­cal role to play in en­sur­ing that the body re­turns—with the solem­ni­ty and the re­spect that it de­serves—from abroad in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, all the way through the pe­ri­od of mourn­ing and it's in­ter­ment," he said.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter added that a date for the fu­ner­al is yet to be an­nounced.  He con­firmed that will be left up to Mr Pan­day's rel­a­tives to de­ter­mine.

Bas­deo Pan­day, who served as the coun­try's fifth prime min­is­ter, and had a long-il­lus­tri­ous pub­lic ca­reer, was 90 years old at the time of his death.