Former Foreign Affairs Ministry permanent secretary Dennis Gouveia died yesterday afternoon at Toronto General Hospital, after being in the Intensive Care Unit for two weeks. He was 66.
Stabroek News was told that Gouveia, who had been living and working in Canada since 1990, had been on life support in the hospital. He was hospitalised as a result of complications from a lung transplant he received a year ago.
According to a statement from his family, Gouveia served in the Foreign Affairs Ministry between 1974 and 1988. He also worked at embassies for Guyana in Washington, USA and Moscow between 1976 and 1982.
Gouveia was permanent secretary between 1982 and 1988 and on resigning from the ministry he took up the post as director of Administration at the Guyana Natural Resources Agency (GNRA).
He had been teaching in Canada.
Gouveia, who grew up in Grant Buxton, Pomeroon, also worked in the Ministry of National Development on his return from a four-year scholarship in the USA where he gained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Sociology from the University of Missouri.
He leaves to mourn his wife Cicely his children Sean, Nadia and Cindy as well as a grandson, Mikhail.