RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Faced with im­pend­ing re­trench­ment, staff and stu­dents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T staged an­oth­er round of protests ahead of a planned meet­ing with the Gov­ern­ment and UTT’s ex­ec­u­tives to dis­cuss an un­cer­tain fu­ture.

Led by sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss, the pro­test­ers marched in a cir­cle out­side UTT’s Corinth cam­pus in Ste Madeleine, chant­i­ng “Al Zubaidy Must Go!” Some of them held up plac­ards which read, “Cut down 100 man­agers, 36 per cent to­tal salary bill” and “Tamana Cam­pus for Sale.”

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the demon­stra­tors came from the Corinth and San Fer­nan­do and were wor­ried over im­pend­ing plans to re­trench 287 peo­ple with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the OW­TU.

Say­ing they were ex­pect­ed to have a meet­ing next Wednes­day with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia and UTT ex­ec­u­tives, Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the union will be re­view­ing the pro­posed re­trench­ment.

“A lot of dis­cus­sions have to be held be­fore any re­trench­ment takes place be­cause so far we view­ing the doc­u­ment and a lot of things have not been said to us,” Ga­jad­har-In­niss lament­ed.

Ques­tioned fur­ther, Ga­jad­har-In­niss said, “How is UTT go­ing to op­er­ate mi­nus the 287 work­ers? They say­ing they want to save $70 mil­lion but what per­cent­age of our work­force is go­ing to be af­fect­ed by that as they try to save $70 mil­lion. Cer­tain­ly from all in­di­ca­tions it seems they are go­ing to re­trench but if any cost cut­ting mea­sures have to be done, it must be done in con­junc­tion with the union.”

She said the Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain what cours­es are go­ing to be changed and how job de­scrip­tions are go­ing to be af­fect­ed.”

She not­ed that on Jan­u­ary 11, pres­i­dent of UTT Pro­fes­sor Sarim Al-Zubaidy sent a pro­pos­al to the union on its re­struc­tur­ing process. The pro­pos­al stat­ed that 287 work­ers would have to be re­trenched which would re­sult in an es­ti­mat­ed an­nu­al cost sav­ings of $41.5 mil­lion. In the first phase of re­struc­tur­ing Al-Zubaidy said UTT saved $35.5 mil­lion hav­ing cut aca­d­e­m­ic staffers. Fur­ther job cuts will save UTT $20 mil­lion, Al-Zubaidy added.

UTT record­ed a deficit of $33 mil­lion in No­vem­ber 2017 while its re­serves cur­rent­ly stand at $2 mil­lion. The Uni­ver­si­ty usu­al­ly gets a month­ly sub­ven­tion of $16.7 mil­lion, how­ev­er, for the past three months, they on­ly re­ceived $10 mil­lion for each month.