Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ob­ject­ing to the pro­posed es­tab­lish­ment of a Debe Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). Row­ley was re­spond­ing to an an­nounce­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day. Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim told the Sen­ate days be­fore that the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny would take place on May 24, the first an­niver­sary of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's elec­tion as head of Gov­ern­ment.

Row­ley, speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street of­fice yes­ter­day, said UWI was a re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion and con­sul­ta­tion was nec­es­sary be­fore any such de­vel­op­ment could take place. Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was ex­pect­ed to meet with UWI of­fi­cials next month to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al but a sod- turn­ing date al­ready had been made pub­lic. Ques­tioned about the rea­sons for seek­ing to ex­pand the in­sti­tu­tion in Debe, Row­ley said it was an elec­tion promise but he said that area was not the most ap­pro­pri­ate for cit­i­zens of T&T.

He said St Au­gus­tine was the most cen­tral lo­ca­tion, even for the peo­ple of To­ba­go and oth­er parts of the coun­try. He said Gov­ern­ment was at­tempt­ing to es­tab­lish a cam­pus in Debe "be­cause of the de­mog­ra­phy of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion with­out dis­cus­sion or agree­ment with the oth­er par­ties in the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies."Row­ley said the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment had lo­cat­ed a piece of land in Or­ange Grove to ex­pand the cam­pus.