Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne is to­day ex­press­ing con­cern over the on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

“The ap­par­ent break­down in wage talks, which can lead to po­ten­tial dis­rup­tions to teach­ing sched­ules, de­mands im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion, and I call on the gov­ern­ment to ac­tive­ly ad­dress the press­ing is­sues raised by the uni­ver­si­ty staff,” Haynes-Al­leyne said.

In a state­ment, she said the Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for im­prove­ment in the de­liv­ery of ed­u­ca­tion at all lev­els and there is no deny­ing the crit­i­cal role of ed­u­ca­tion in our na­tion's de­vel­op­ment and, by ex­ten­sion, the ur­gent need for sus­tain­able fund­ing for ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions like the UWI.

“This gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly shown that it does not care about fix­ing the is­sues plagu­ing our ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, giv­en that in suc­ces­sive bud­gets there have been sig­nif­i­cant cuts, in­clud­ing to Gov­ern­ment’s sub­ven­tion to the UWI as an­nounced in June 2022," she said.

Haynes-Al­leyne said with the Par­lia­ment present­ly en­gaged in an ex­am­i­na­tion of the 2024 Na­tion­al Bud­get, she re­it­er­at­ed that the Gov­ern­ment must re­vise its line of ac­tion when it comes to the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

“De­spite fram­ing their ap­proach to the next year as “Build­ing Ca­pac­i­ty for Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and Growth”, the Gov­ern­ment seems to have left key con­trib­u­tors in the de­vel­op­ment of our hu­man cap­i­tal to bat­tle it out on their own," she said.

The Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion added, “Steps must be tak­en to en­sure that the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion of UWI stu­dents is not com­pro­mised, and I urge the gov­ern­ment to en­gage in con­struc­tive di­a­logue with all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing WIGUT and UWI man­age­ment, to find a mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­able res­o­lu­tion.”

She said the Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for the ad­vance­ment of a re­silient ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that pri­ori­tis­es the wel­fare of both ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents.