With three days be­fore class­es be­gin at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, scores of stu­dents have not been able to reg­is­ter at the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) of­fice and have their means tests done.

The sit­u­a­tion is now be­ing de­scribed by the pres­i­dent of UWI’s Stu­dent Guild Justin Subero as “chaot­ic and mass con­fu­sion.”

There has been a string of posts by stu­dents on so­cial me­dia slam­ming GATE’s St Au­gus­tine of­fice for its poor ser­vice and lack of in­ter­est in as­sist­ing them with their queries and con­cerns.

Subero said part of the prob­lem is that “stu­dents still have a hold on their ac­counts that have been pre­vent­ing them from reg­is­ter­ing.”

To com­pound mat­ters, Subero said the of­fice has not been con­duct­ing the means test for stu­dents in an ef­fi­cient and time­ly man­ner due to poor staffing.

The means test is a method used to as­sess the abil­i­ty of the fam­i­ly, or of in­de­pen­dent in­di­vid­u­als, to con­tribute fi­nan­cial­ly to the cost of their ed­u­ca­tion.

All stu­dents com­menc­ing a new pro­gramme from Au­gust 2017 and be­yond are sub­ject to means-test­ing.

“ I don’t think the of­fice be­ing un­der­re­sourced should re­sult in stu­dents’ lives be­ing in­con­ve­nienced. That is un­ac­cept­able,” Subero com­plained.

Stu­dents’ reg­is­tra­tion at UWI be­gan on Jan­u­ary 13 with class­es to start this Mon­day.

“Stu­dents are be­ing left high and dry. The most right now UWI is do­ing is waiv­ing the late reg­is­tra­tion fees for stu­dents. Right now we are hop­ing that GATE can process the ap­pli­ca­tions in time for when class­es be­gin.”

With the clock tick­ing, Subero said stu­dents have been in a state of “pan­ic and wor­ry” be­cause they are un­able to reg­is­ter for their cours­es. Many of them are fi­nal years stu­dents.”

Since last se­mes­ter, he said stu­dents had ap­plied for the test and await­ing ap­provals.

Stu­dents whose ap­pli­ca­tions have been “processed un­ap­proved still face a chal­lenge, in that, they still have the ac­count re­ceiv­ables on hold.”

He said UWI and the guild have been do­ing all that they can to mit­i­gate the is­sue.

“But we are still wait­ing on GATE to process the re­main­der of ap­pli­ca­tions and to ac­tu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate that to UWI so they can re­move the ac­counts re­ceiv­ables hold.”

If the sit­u­a­tion is not rec­ti­fied by Mon­day, Subero said the guild would protest with stu­dents.

“Protest is our last re­sort. If the sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to per­sist the guild would stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the stu­dents and their rights. I don’t see it be­ing an ac­tion out of our reach.”

Un­able to say how many stu­dents are af­fect­ed, Subero said with­in the last two weeks the guild re­ceived “hun­dreds of com­plaints from stu­dents” about the mat­ter.

Subero said the guild tried to make con­tact with the of­fice but was un­suc­cess­ful.

He ap­pealed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for swift ac­tion to re­solve this on­go­ing is­sue.

For­mer ter­tiary min­is­ter Fazal Karim said part of the prob­lem hinges on in­ad­e­quate staffing at the GATE of­fice which is an in­dict­ment on the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to get its act to­geth­er.

“It shows the lev­el of in­ef­fi­cien­cy at a cru­cial time like this. This would no doubt leave stu­dents in un­cer­tain­ty, dis­tressed and fum­ing. I call on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion and en­sure that ad­e­quate re­sources are pro­vid­ed so that stu­dents can have their ed­u­ca­tion free from stress and ut­ter con­fu­sion,” Karim said.