Shal­iza Has­sanali

By the end of 2013, Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to spend $438.2 mil­lion on con­struc­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) South Pe­nal/Debe cam­pus. The con­fir­ma­tion came from Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Fazal Karim on Fri­day. Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al was award­ed the con­tract with five lo­cal sub con­trac­tors as­sist­ing in con­struc­tion of the cam­pus on 73 hectares of land.

In 2011 and 2012, Gov­ern­ment in­ject­ed $150 mil­lion in­to the project. An­oth­er $288.2 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for spend­ing be­tween 2012 and 2013. At the end of 2014, an­oth­er $71.2 mil­lion will be pumped in­to the project, bring­ing the to­tal fig­ure to $509.4 mil­lion. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed un­der the min­istry's 2012 de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gramme for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the project.

Of the $509 mil­lion, Karim said, the con­struc­tion of site of­fices, wash­rooms, change rooms and con­ces­sions will ab­sorb the largest slice of the cam­pus bud­get, $36.5 mil­lion.

Cost of ex­ter­nal works:

�2 Roads and car parks-$19 mil­lion

�2 Fences and Gates-$1.2 mil­lion

�2 Drainage (sur­face soil)- $972,000

�2 Elec­tri­cal kiosk, site sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion- $5.1 mil­lion

�2 Land­scap­ing -$2.3 mil­lion

Work on Phase One, Karim said, will see the con­struc­tion of five ma­jor build­ings–the Law Fac­ul­ty Build­ing, Cam­pus Li­brary, Moot Court, Stu­dent Union Build­ing and Aca­d­e­m­ic Build­ing, which are ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over to the Gov­ern­ment in the first quar­ter of 2014.The­p­ro­ject will al­so in­clude a crick­et pavil­ion, swim­ming pool, guard booths, play­grounds and hard courts to name a few.

The five build­ings are ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered by the first quar­ter of 2014, with an in­take of 1,000 stu­dents by Sep­tem­ber of that same year.

UWI South to help stem the brain drain

Karim said, "As we speak, soil test­ing has been com­plet­ed, while we have start­ed the in­stal­la­tion of piles. We had in­di­cat­ed to the con­trac­tors that we want­ed a min­i­mum of 40 per cent lo­cal con­tent, and that we have main­tained." The to­tal work­force on the site, Karim said, com­pris­es 30 Chi­nese and 50 lo­cals.

The plan, Karim said, was to ex­pand the fac­ul­ty of­fer­ing, since the pop­u­la­tion of the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion had grown from 83,000 in 2000 to 89, 000 in 2011. Ac­cord­ing to the Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter, there are 13 sec­ondary schools with­in the Pe­nal/Debe ar­eas which can act as a feed­er stock to the pro­grammes of­fered by UWI.

"The in­ten­tion is to al­so have pro­grammes that are re­spon­sive to the lo­ca­tion. And since you have quite a num­ber of en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the south­ern part of the coun­try, some of the pro­grammes will be re­spon­sive to the oil and gas, law, en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, and en­gi­neer­ing sec­tors, while agri­cul­ture is some­thing that we will al­so want to con­sid­er.

"We have been ad­vised that over 300 busi­ness­es line the Debe to Pe­nal route." Karim said in his last dis­cus­sion with the cam­pus project man­age­ment team, they had in­di­cat­ed that work was pro­gress­ing apace and sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly. "We are keep­ing a close eye to en­sure that the project is done with­in time and bud­get."

He said there was a con­di­tion­al­i­ty for the project man­ag­er and client should they fail to hand over the cam­pus in a time­ly man­ner. "We are look­ing for­ward for the cam­pus con­tribut­ing to the ter­tiary sec­tor in a sig­nif­i­cant way. It is all part of the min­istry build­ing the brains of the coun­try." Karim said this new uni­ver­si­ty would stem the coun­try's brain drain and out­flow of for­eign ex­change for stu­dents who want to pur­sue law de­grees out­side of T&T.

For the pe­ri­od 2005 to 2011, Karim said, Gov­ern­ment had dis­bursed $81.2 mil­lion to sev­er­al stu­dents pur­su­ing law de­grees at­law schools re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­nal­ly.

BOX Con­struc­tion facts

An ar­ti­cle in the Trinidad Guardian dat­ed April 24, 2012 stat­ed that at a Cam­pus Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al got the nod over three oth­er com­pa­nies for the project.

The eval­u­a­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tion com­mit­tee ranked the Chi­nese firm well above the oth­er firms with 1,000 points. Ki­er/Kee Chanona Joint Ven­ture scored 648.77 points, while UF­PO West In­dies De­vel­op­ment both scored 648.23 points. GLF Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived 496 points.

Con­struc­tion facts

An ar­ti­cle in the Trinidad Guardian dat­ed April 24, 2012 stat­ed that at a Cam­pus Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al got the nod over three oth­er com­pa­nies for the project.

The eval­u­a­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tion com­mit­tee ranked the Chi­nese firm well above the oth­er firms with 1,000 points. Ki­er/Kee Chanona Joint Ven­ture scored 648.77 points, while UF­PO West In­dies De­vel­op­ment both scored 648.23 points. GLF Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived 496 points.