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Friday, July 11, 2025

PM: Gate cuts will be best we can afford

by

20160720

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate) pro­gramme is stay­ing. How­ev­er, he says be­cause of the trep­i­da­tion over im­pend­ing ad­just­ments to the pro­gramme, it will be re­viewed by his Cab­i­net with a car­ing eye.

Row­ley made the com­ment while ad­dress­ing T&T stu­dents dur­ing his vis­it to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Mona Cam­pus, Ja­maica, as he con­tin­ued ac­tiv­i­ties on his five-day vis­it to Ja­maica.

The ses­sion took greater sig­nif­i­cance af­ter wide­spread pan­ic among the T&T stu­dent bod­ies across the re­gion in the wake of a me­dia re­port over the week­end that mas­sive cuts were rec­om­mend­ed by the Task Force ap­point­ed to re­view the pro­gramme.

This in­clud­ed a pro­pos­al that stu­dents pay up to one third of their fees. Un­der the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments, the cost of tu­ition is met ful­ly by Gov­ern­ment.But as he met with the stu­dent body yes­ter­day, Row­ley as­sured them there was no need for any pan­ic.

"We didn't just de­cide to cut the pro­gramme. We had a prop­er analy­sis done and that analy­sis looked at the com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme, in­clud­ing the re­quire­ment to pre­serve what we are in­vest­ing in, be­cause the mon­ey we are spend­ing on you is an in­vest­ment in the fu­ture of the coun­try," he ex­plained.

He said the re­view was un­der­tak­en as the coun­try was fac­ing a very sig­nif­i­cant loss of rev­enue be­cause of col­lapsed com­mod­i­ty prices in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

"That by it­self is push­ing us to have to close some very se­ri­ous bud­get deficits," he added.

He said notwith­stand­ing that, the pro­gramme was due for a re­view af­ter ex­ist­ing for sev­er­al years and the re­view was "not meant to back­track on our com­mit­ment to make sure that you all are ed­u­cat­ed or to be de­nied an ed­u­ca­tion on the ba­sis that you are not able to pay tu­ition."

While the pur­pose of the task force re­port was to make rec­om­men­da­tions on re­duc­ing over­all ex­pen­di­ture, Row­ley said: "We are com­mit­ted to cut­ting out the waste, the abuse and the cor­rup­tion and to en­sure the sac­ri­fice we make to pay for your ed­u­ca­tion is the best we can af­ford."

He said it costs Gov­ern­ment $750 mil­lion each year to ed­u­cate Gate-ap­proved cit­i­zens and urged those gath­ered not to take tax­pay­ers' sac­ri­fices for grant­ed.

Not­ing the high de­mand for pro­fes­sion­als in the field of med­i­cine, he said: "You in the med­ical field ought not to wor­ry. Even though we be­come more se­lec­tive in what we fund, the area of health care de­liv­ery is an area of grave short­age in the coun­try."

Cab­i­net, he added, would meet to dis­cuss the rec­om­men­da­tions be­fore any fi­nal de­ci­sion was made "but what I can tell you is that we will re­view the rec­om­men­da­tions with a very car­ing eye."

Some stu­dents got to their feet, ask­ing the PM that even if the de­ci­sion is that they are to fund even part of their tu­ition, whether it would be pos­si­ble to fa­cil­i­tate low in­ter­est stu­dent friend­ly loans.

Since 2004, over 65,000 stu­dents have passed through the pro­gramme.

Hap­py with trade talks

Com­ment­ing on one of his ma­jor rea­sons for vis­it­ing Kingston, Row­ley said it was "to face down the chal­lenge of a trade war be­tween T&T and Ja­maica." He said he was leav­ing Ja­maica "con­fi­dent that what­ev­er flick­er (ex­ist­ed) would not turn in­to a flame."

In re­sponse to a ques­tion on the im­mi­gra­tion is­sue in­volv­ing Ja­maicans de­nied en­try in­to T&T, Row­ley said the mat­ter should not be gen­er­alised. He said it was "quite a mis­un­der­stand­ing that Ja­maicans were be­ing sin­gled out for spe­cial treat­ment and bad treat­ment in T&T. I re­ject that out of hand."

Row­ley said de­spite the re­cent claims about un­fair treat­ment at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port there were thou­sands of Ja­maicans go­ing about their busi­ness in T&T with­out any prob­lems what­so­ev­er.

"You will see that 97 per cent of the Ja­maicans that left to come to T&T, en­tered with no prob­lem," he said.

Row­ley said re­cent re­ports about Ja­maicans ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems when they at­tempt­ed to en­ter the coun­try were on­ly about three per cent. He said some of those in the three per cent "had failed to qual­i­fy for en­try un­der per­mis­si­ble arrange­ments."He said it was "im­por­tant for the lead­ers in the coun­tries to say to the trav­el­ling pop­u­la­tion of the re­gion that there are cer­tain re­stric­tions that could ap­ply."

He al­so said cer­tain im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers were be­ing trained and fa­cil­i­ties were be­ing es­tab­lished at the air­port to en­sure all vis­i­tors were treat­ed with dig­ni­ty when they ar­rived in T&T.

He said dur­ing his vis­it he did not meet "one per­son who said or im­plied that we are not bet­ter off to­geth­er and that we are not broth­ers and sis­ters in this re­gion."

Row­ley's of­fi­cial vis­it to Ja­maica ends to­day and his ad­dress to the UWI stu­dents yes­ter­day was streamed live.


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