RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­firmed that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) has no deed or lease for the lands on which the UWI Debe cam­pus was built.

Re­spond­ing via What­sApp yes­ter­day to ques­tions on the mat­ter, the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that UWI nev­er re­ceived a lease or deed for the 100-plus-acre prop­er­ty, which stretch­es along the M2 Ring Road in Debe.

For­mer UWI prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland, yes­ter­day al­so con­firmed that dur­ing his tenure, the uni­ver­si­ty had per­mis­sion to oc­cu­py the land and was seek­ing to have it for­mal­ly vest­ed in UWI.

“It was hand­ed to UWI, so it is the UWI cam­pus. The name was ap­proved by cam­pus coun­cil and ap­proved by the gov­ern­ment,” Pro­fes­sor Copeland said.

Asked whether Gov­ern­ment had the au­thor­i­ty to take back the cam­pus, Pro­fes­sor Copeland said, “The Gov­ern­ment could take back any­thing it wants by law. I’m not sure it’s go­ing to work be­cause one thing a gov­ern­ment can­not do is run a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. I don’t know, maybe they’ll take it and give it to UTT. I re­al­ly can’t see what will hap­pen if they de­cide to go that route. But it sounds like a long process, which means that there will be noth­ing hap­pen­ing at the cam­pus for the next two years.”

Asked why UWI had failed to op­er­a­tionalise the cam­pus and en­rol stu­dents, Pro­fes­sor Copeland said con­struc­tion was still in­com­plete and the soil con­di­tions were prob­lem­at­ic.

“The li­brary was not fin­ished. It was ba­si­cal­ly just columns and con­crete floors. We could not com­plete that build­ing and need­ed more fund­ing. I re­mem­ber we had to com­plete the swim­ming pool and the ten­nis court. There were many is­sues be­cause the soil is not very for­giv­ing.”

He said the stu­dent sec­tion and the law fac­ul­ty build­ing were among the most com­plete parts of the cam­pus.

Pro­fes­sor Copeland said the con­trac­tor failed to ful­fil oblig­a­tions.

“The con­trac­tor was not liv­ing up to the agree­ment. The time­line was not be­ing met, and there was not enough staff or work­ers on-site.” As a re­sult, he said, UWI ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract and be­gan com­plet­ing the work in phas­es.

Pro­fes­sor Copeland said an as­sess­ment was done in 2017 to ex­plore open­ing the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine, which gen­er­at­ed ex­cite­ment among re­gion­al stake­hold­ers. He said in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical stu­dents would have stud­ied at the Debe cam­pus and used the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal and the Cou­va Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty for clin­i­cal train­ing, bring­ing for­eign ex­change in­to T&T. He main­tained that the plan is still vi­able and said the cam­pus could al­so be used for law and agri­cul­ture.

He ex­pressed con­cern over any plan to aban­don the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine, which he said would have been a valu­able for­eign ex­change earn­er for UWI.

Last week dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter warned UWI, “Do not test me! If I have to do it and if we have to do it, I’ll take that cam­pus back and put it un­der Gov­ern­ment con­trol to make sure we com­plete it!”

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment built the cam­pus dur­ing its 2010-15 term at re­port­ed costs of $500 mil­lion-plus.

While in­tend­ed as a fac­ul­ty of law, the UWI re­cent­ly said the cam­pus would be used as a school of med­i­cine af­ter re­main­ing un­used for years.

Fol­low­ing a re­cent tour of the site by Oropouche East MP and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, the fa­cil­i­ty was de­scribed as be­ing in a “hor­rif­ic” state. The UWI said de­spite very tight fi­nan­cial re­sources, it had pri­ori­tised and pro­ceed­ed with crit­i­cal re­pair work and se­cu­ri­ty en­hance­ments to pre­pare the cam­pus in an­tic­i­pa­tion of phased re­open­ing, be­gin­ning in Au­gust.