Kali­fa Clyne

Sit­u­at­ed on a 142-acre site near the Pic­ton Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School and min­utes away from the Debe High School is a jum­ble of con­crete and met­al struc­tures, ro­tun­das, spi­ral stair­cas­es cov­ered in bright blue tar­pau­lin and glass re­flect­ing the mid­day sun­light.

Amid the jum­ble is a sign–white with two shades of blue, iden­ti­fy­ing the Fac­ul­ty of Law.

About 400 me­tres, down a road­way, near a slant­ed met­al bar, on a wall, is an­oth­er sign. This one in­di­cat­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) South Cam­pus.

On Au­gust 2, 2012, the con­tract to com­mence con­struc­tion of the South Cam­pus in Pe­nal-Debe was signed at the Of­fice of the Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal.

It was ex­pect­ed that the first in­take of stu­dents would be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2016.

To­day, the cam­pus has a new date for its first in­take–Au­gust 2017.

In a brief in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian on Wednes­day, Prof Bri­an Copeland, UWI's newest chan­cel­lor, said the a de­ci­sion had been made on Tues­day, and UWI was hop­ing to be­gin pop­u­lat­ing the school by Au­gust.

"We will move to the cam­pus, get it start­ed and what­ev­er needs to be com­plet­ed, we will deal with it as time goes by," Copeland said.

He said the uni­ver­si­ty will al­so be com­plet­ed with­in its ini­tial bud­get of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500 mil­lion.

The cam­pus was sup­posed to be ready for the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2014/2016 even though $509.3 mil­lion was ap­proved by Cab­i­net in Sep­tem­ber 2013. In Sep­tem­ber 2013, Cab­i­net ap­proved $509.3 mil­lion for the project with an ex­pect­ed com­ple­tion date of Oc­to­ber 2015. Pages 42 and 43 of the 2017 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) tabled by the gov­ern­ment in the 2017 bud­get states that "an al­lo­ca­tion of $43 mil­lion was pro­vid­ed in fis­cal 2016 of which $9.6 mil­lion was utilised for con­struc­tion, con­sul­tant, and project man­age­ment fees. The build­ing works is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent com­plet­ed, while out­fit­ting of all build­ings, ex­ter­nal fix­tures and ex­ter­nal works is 46 per cent com­plet­ed."

How­ev­er, work had slowed down by con­trac­tors Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Tech­ni­cal Co-op­er­a­tion Cor­po­ra­tion.

Copeland had said there were prob­lems with the con­trac­tor, which he did not wish to dis­close.

Copeland did not say whether the orig­i­nal con­trac­tor would con­tin­ue the project, adding that the uni­ver­si­ty would re­lease a full state­ment in the com­ing weeks.

He said the Law fac­ul­ty would be the first to move as the South cam­pus was built with law as the flag­ship.

"I can tell you that peo­ple will move in Au­gust so that we will start a pro­gramme in Sep­tem­ber.

"The lo­gis­tics still has to be done, time tabling, plan­ning around stu­dents mo­bil­i­ty and oth­er plan­ning."

Copeland said the law fac­ul­ty was cur­rent­ly cramped in St Au­gus­tine.

Oth­er fac­ul­ties are al­so ex­pect­ed to mi­grate to the Debe cam­pus over time.

Build­ing on­ly 80

per cent com­plete

Last Oc­to­ber, Copeland said the uni­ver­si­ty was 80 per cent com­plete.

A vis­it from the Sun­day Guardian showed that not much had im­proved and no work­ers were vis­i­ble on site dur­ing the Wednes­day vis­it.

The cam­pus struc­ture, even in­com­plete and sur­round­ed by scaf­fold­ing and con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al, looks im­pres­sive.

The cam­pus build­ings in­clude a moot court, ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing and law fac­ul­ty build­ings as well as a li­brary, which is in an ad­vanced stage of com­ple­tion.

A stu­dent union ser­vices build­ing, dor­mi­to­ries with 100 rooms and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties are al­so al­most com­plete and car parks have been paved.

For­mer UWI chan­cel­lor Clement Sankat said the cam­pus will have a crick­et field, foot­ball fa­cil­i­ties and a swim­ming pool.

In an in­ter­view last year, for­mer Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Fazal Karim said while the build­ing was 80 per cent com­plete, out­fit­ting of all build­ings, ex­ter­nal fix­tures and ex­ter­nal works were 50 per cent com­plet­ed.

The South cam­pus was first an­nounced by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion to be com­plet­ed on lands pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd.

Speak­ing to the Guardian on Fri­day, Karim said a 2008 study con­duct­ed by the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Of­fice at the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus on "Ad­dress­ing Stu­dent Needs for Uni­ver­si­ty Ed­u­ca­tion in South Trinidad con­clud­ed that a sec­ond Cam­pus lo­cat­ed in the coun­try's south­ern re­gion would ex­tend the Uni­ver­si­ty's reach and would re­spond to the needs of key south-based in­dus­tri­al and busi­ness sec­tors while at the same time serv­ing to re­duce the con­ges­tion of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus .

The UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus en­rolled 7,566 stu­dents in the 2000/2001 aca­d­e­m­ic year and by 2010/2011 the fig­ure climbed to 16,742–a 121 per cent in­crease.