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Former parliamentarian Morgan Job will be laid to rest on Friday. A statement yesterday said Job’s funeral service will be held at the Trinity Cathedral, Port-of-Spain. The service begins at 2.30 pm and ends at 4 pm. Tributes begin at 2 pm. A memorial service will be held 40 days later at the Scarborough Anglican Church in Tobago.
As tributes continue to pour in, Planning and Development Minister Camille Robinson-Regis described him as a “politician who said things that were quite controversial.”
Robinson-Regis, who was a member of the Patrick Manning-led Opposition when Job sat in the Parliament, was among those who paid tribute to the former parliamentarian.
She recalled “several outbursts” when Job sat in the Parliament, “but he and I had a fairly cordial relationship.”
While admitting that she did not know Job well, Robinson-Regis said she bought one of his books which he peddled at the airport and “the book had interesting tenets upon which he based some of the ideas he brought forward”.
Robinson-Regis said it was only some weeks ago when the media first highlighted his plight that the Government realised that he was ill, having end-stage pancreatic cancer.
While she extended her personal condolences to Job’s daughters and other relatives, she assured that the official condolences will be recorded in Hansard when the condolences are done in Parliament.
Job’s former colleague in government Ralph Maraj said when Job stood to speak everyone listened. “What stood out for me was that he was a very erudite individual and he had a profound understanding of economics, culture, history, literature, even religion,” Maraj said.
Maraj added: “I remember him expounding on the Bhagavad Gita, so I considered him a national resource, and I think it says a lot about the country that we have never benefited enough from his ideas and intellectual output.”
He is hoping that the country and the State would recognise that Job was “an outstanding intellectual of Trinidad and Tobago.”
Maraj also hopes that the Government would make a contribution towards his funeral.
Another former minister Dr Adesh Nanan recalled that at Cabinet discussions Job fought “tooth and nail for Tobago.”
He said Job was an “extremely honourable and patriotic soul to this country,” as he also extended condolences to the relatives of the late Tobago East MP.
Political analyst Dr Winford James said Job’s death was a “significant loss for the country.”
Job, he said, was concerned about making the country a better place, “he was very concerned about getting the population to use their brains.”
As a “political fixture in the public consciousness for a long time,” James said Job was always “consistent, in what he wanted for Trinidad and Tobago. It is unfortunate that he has been struck down by disease rather than dying naturally in his old age. But he has had a good life.”
Job, he said, had left “an intellectual legacy that we should preserve in the shape of his books and pamphlets.”
Pastor Clive Dottin, of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, described Job as a national who “made a tremendous contribution” to T&T and one whom the country “undervalued.”
He described Job as a “researcher, one who read widely and who made a significant contribution as a media person, a politician, and a former minister of government.”
The Progressive Democratic Patriots, led by Watson Duke, has described him as a man who “never shied away from controversy.”