Former Education Minister Dr. Tim Gopeesingh has been appointed to serve as a temporary UNC Senator in the Upper House, on the advice of Opposition Leader, Kamla Persad Bissessar.

Th UNC released the following in a statement:

Dr Gopeesingh, who was awarded the Chaconia Gold Medal in 1999 for his contribution to medicine and public service, is one of Trinidad and Tobago’s and Caribbean region’s most venerated senior medical doctors, having worked in the medical field for over 40 years, specializing in gynecologic-oncology, where he pioneered laparoscopic surgery in the country in the early 1980s. He is also a former senior UWL Lecturer, Dean of the UWI Medical School and former national cricketer.

Dr Gopeesingh has been a member of the UNC for the past 30 years, and served as a Senator from 2001-2007, and then MP for Caroni East from 2007-2020, when he announced his retirement from representative politics.

Under the Kamla Persad-Bissessar Government of 2010-2015, Dr Gopeesingh served as Minister of Education, where he pioneered her ground-breaking, prescient internationally acclaimed policy –the E-Connect and Learn, which saw every student entering Form One receiving a free laptop, in a bid to modernize the education system and bring it into the new age of technology. He also constructed over 100 primary and secondary schools, as well as ECCE centres, and enabled Trinidad and Tobago to become of the of first countries in the world to have achieved the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals of Universal Early Childhood Care and Education.