Sixty-five years ago Ken Subraj attended the Georgetown Technical Institute (GTI) and since then he has travelled the world and worked, ultimately with his two brothers, to build one of New York’s huge rental conglomerates Zara Realty Holding Company. During all those years, Subraj never forgot the foundation he received at the institute and how it shaped his life.
It is was precisely for that reason that the father, grandfather and great grandfather, now 81 years old, has given back to that institute to the tune of some $140 million. Subraj, who has not been back to Guyana since 1989, told Stabroek Weekend that the recent signing of a partnership with the Ministry of Education, which would see GTI having a brand new, state-of-the-art building, has been 15 years in the making.
“I would like this project to be as useful as [GTI] has been for a lot of students who came out of GTI,” Subraj said. “I know I was a very good student after I come out of GTI. It helped me a lot and if this building can serve the community, serve the Guyanese students and they take it very seriously and move on to do various development for themselves; definitely they would get a professional job and stay in Guyana to help out the Guyanese people.”
While the donation was made under his charitable foundation, Subraj said Zara, and more specifically he, had been pushing for the project for many years.
“I don’t know why it took so long. I don’t know who is to be blamed… but it took 15 years to get it off the ground and I hope now that it is off the ground that it would get going,” he disclosed to this newspaper in a recorded interview
The $140 million project is part of a public-private partnership between the ministry and his foundation and once completed, the building will boast an oil and gas laboratory, lecture theatres, smart classrooms, a welfare unit, and an administrative block among other features. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed recently, followed by a sod-turning ceremony at GTI’s Woolford Avenue compound.
Subraj was not there, but he said he would be keenly watching the progress of the building, which he has for years wanted to become a reality.
Helped to shape his life
Subraj shared that the institute helped to shape his life as it was there he received the foundational training that saw him working in different countries in the Middle East and in the United Kingdom.
He recalled that before he attended GTI, he worked with his parents in their farming business which utilised equipment like diesel engines and trucks among other things. It was during his farming days that his engineering and mechanical training begin.
“When I went to the GTI for the interview they asked me questions across those lines and I was able to make the cut, so to speak, because I was familiar with some of the terminology they used in preparing me for the industry,” Subraj said.
He recalled that back then, GTI was the only institute that offered such training and the only other option was going to work with the Guyana Sugar Corporation and being sent off to its training centre, which he said was more practical without any lectures.
Subraj attended GTI from 1956 to 1961 and he said with the training he got he was able to “get going” in life.
At that time, he said, three of his lecturers were English expatriates and there was another from India, who, along with others, taught him well and prepared him for the future.
“All in all they gave you a good background to help you move on in life…,” he said.
Now looking to the future, Subraj, who still works virtually Sunday to Sunday at the family company, said he hopes the institution can improve in leaps and bounds and called on the powers that be to find opportunities for this to be done and maybe make it into a miniature University of Guyana.
Qualified
Following his stint at GTI, Subraj gained some United Kingdom qualifications in 1967 and went to England where he worked for just over a year with an English electrical company. He returned to his home country and was employed with the public works department of the then Ministry of Works and Hydraulics. He helped to run two of the workshops under the ministry.
He said he became “disenchanted” after a few months and applied for an engineering job in Mackenzie, Linden where he spent just over four years working in the mines.
Subraj then became qualified as a UK chartered engineer and he returned to that country, where for a few months he worked on designing and setting up hydraulic systems for the offshore business. In April 1975, he got a job in the Middle East and he worked in countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman among others for some 20 years.
He then moved to New York where he joined with his brothers, Jay Sobhraj and the late George Subraj in running an apartment building in Queens, which they had started setting up since 1982.
“It was a joint venture… between my brothers and myself,” he disclosed.
Over the years, Subraj had four children: Dave, Jailall, Dinah and the late Kevin.
According to Jay Sobhraj in an interview with Authority Magazine in the US, Zara [established just over 40 years ago] has grown from operating one building with 44 units to 60 complexes with 5,000 units located throughout Queens and Nassau County. The family’s various charitable endeavours were born out of Zara’s success, which has fulfilled their mission to be a force for good, improving the lives of thousands of families
“We have kept the words of our rice farmer father Mr Sobhraj Bhooklall in our hearts and minds as we travelled the road to success. He told us that family must stick together. He taught us that hard work plus smart work equals great work. Most importantly, he emboldened us to rely on faith and education to achieve prosperity. When we faced constant discrimination and numerous denials in getting financing for our real estate ventures, we knew that this was the fight our father prepared us for… and because of him, we remain victorious,” Jay told the magazine.
According to Jay the family is very passionate about helping the community, both in Queens and in Guyana and through charitable ventures has helped many and would like to help more people seize opportunities and achieve their dreams. The brothers have designed a system of giving that produces high-impact, measurable results and over the years have donated over 5,000 pairs of eyeglasses annually to health clinics in Guyana, built research centres and laboratories to advance healthcare, as well as provided qualified doctors who can perform lifesaving procedures for seniors and children in Guyana.
In Queens and Guyana they have also constructed numerous libraries, teaching/research centres, and funded tutorial services and scholarships for students to advance their education.
“We never forgot how we started and how we wished we could have had more help along the way. We are humbled that our philanthropy is an expression of our gratitude for God blessing us with the ability to propel others towards pursuing a fuller life of liberty and happiness,” Jay told the magazine.
“Besides education, our passion is also for medicine and medical care, having made lifesaving contributions to benefit patients in Guyana. In 2008, my late, great brother George Subraj pioneered Guyana’s first kidney transplant by bringing in a team of transplant surgeons from Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, to save the life of a 17-year-old boy. In the ensuing years, countless more liver and kidney disease patients have been saved.”
Their late brother George also introduced paediatric heart surgeries to Guyana reportedly saving the lives of eight children whose parents were unable to raise the huge sums necessary for the surgeries that were only available overseas. His efforts, Jay said, helped build out facilities, bring the necessary life-saving equipment, and recruit leading US surgeons to help Guyanese doctors establish specialty paediatric and cardiac care units that could save even more lives in the future.
While George passed away in November 2016, his legacy of “treating life as a gift”, according to Jay, continues through the hard work and dedication of his loving brothers, Jay and Ken.
According to Ken Subraj, he keeps abreast with what is happening in Guyana from the internet and feedback from family and friends.
“I don’t go to Guyana. The attractiveness for Guyana is not in me at the moment, but who knows, it might change tomorrow, next week, next month,” he said.
Today, he dreams that Guyana’s oil production can grow, and that ordinary people can benefit. “It is important that they don’t put the money in their pockets,” he said.
