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Friday, July 18, 2025

UTT in $57m hole, eyes staff pay cuts

by

SHaliza Hassanali
1719 days ago
20201102

A $57 mil­lion cash deficit for the be­lea­guered Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) for fis­cal year 2021 could re­sult in its 800-plus work­ers hav­ing to take a salary cut.

But while UTT chair­man Prof Clement Im­bert can­not say if the uni­ver­si­ty’s lin­ger­ing fi­nan­cial woes will lead to a third wave of re­trench­ment at the in­sti­tu­tion, he said one op­tion they may se­ri­ous­ly look is slash­ing work­ers’ salaries.

“It’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty. Many oth­er com­pa­nies have done that. It is an op­tion. There is no doubt about it,” Im­bert told Guardian Me­dia as he drew ref­er­ence to Caribbean Air­lines pi­lots who re­cent­ly took a 57 per cent salary cut for three months af­ter the com­pa­ny weighed the op­tion of send­ing them home for a pe­ri­od of time as the air­line strug­gles dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Im­bert said over 75 per cent of the uni­ver­si­ty’s ex­pen­di­ture goes to­wards salaries. He said by mid-No­vem­ber, when the board meets in an emer­gency meet­ing, they will have to make some tough de­ci­sions.

The sit­u­a­tion ma­te­ri­alised af­ter a let­ter was sent to UTT’s act­ing pres­i­dent Prof Prakash Per­sad, pro­fes­sors and aca­d­e­m­ic staff on Oc­to­ber 21 by its fi­nan­cial con­troller Feona Lue Ping Wa, not­ed “the uni­ver­si­ty’s bud­get for the year 2021 is pro­ject­ing sig­nif­i­cant cash deficits of some ($57 mil­lion).”

Lue Ping Wa point­ed out that UTT’s re­cur­rent al­lo­ca­tion of $180 mil­lion “can­not even meet pay­roll cost (salaries) much less non-pay­roll costs.”

The in­ter­nal let­ter, which Guardian Me­dia re­ceived a copy of, said the uni­ver­si­ty had re­quest­ed $270 mil­lion pri­or to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s Oc­to­ber 5 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. How­ev­er, the uni­ver­si­ty was on­ly al­lo­cat­ed $180 mil­lion, re­sult­ing in a short­fall of $90 mil­lion. Lue Ping Wa said the uni­ver­si­ty al­so re­quest­ed $27 mil­lion for the flag­ship Tamana Cam­pus in Waller­field but was al­lo­cat­ed $4 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the draft es­ti­mates of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for 2021, UTT spent $214.4 mil­lion for fis­cal year 2019-2020.

Based on their 2021 al­lo­ca­tion of $180 mil­lion, UTT would face a $34.4 mil­lion de­crease in fund­ing when com­pared to 2020.

While UTT’s act­ing pres­i­dent has held dis­cus­sions with the re­spec­tive heads on some cost-cut­ting mea­sures, Lue Ping Wa stressed it was al­most im­pos­si­ble to cut more spend­ing for 2021.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said as far as she knows, UTT, UWI, COSTAATT, NI­HERST and MIC had all sub­mit­ted bud­gets that were over their 2021 al­lo­ca­tions.

“What hap­pens at these times is that the uni­ver­si­ty, of course, would look to stream­line its op­er­a­tions, which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean re­trench­ment, but they look at all of the oth­er things they could pos­si­bly re­duce costs on and where they sim­ply can­not re­duce any more, they would reach out to the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the line min­istry as well. We would have dis­cus­sions on what else is crit­i­cal­ly need­ed to as­sist the in­sti­tu­tion,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She said at this point she could not say if UTT would head in­to its third wave of lay­offs.

“This is the time they will be look­ing at the lean­est they could get their op­er­a­tions. They would have to cut costs some­where as we all have to,” the min­is­ter said, not­ing she would meet with UTT’s board of gov­er­nors this month.

Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union branch pres­i­dent Wade Ce­de­no said UTT had writ­ten the union’s ex­ec­u­tive seek­ing a meet­ing on the is­sue but could not say what the dis­cus­sions will hinge on.

“I know ex­act­ly what they are com­ing with be­cause I have been pay­ing at­ten­tion to what is go­ing on in the me­dia. A lot of the staff have been hav­ing dis­cus­sions amongst them­selves about what they feel would hap­pen. The spec­u­lat­ing...no­body knows what is go­ing on,” Ce­de­no said.

Ce­de­no did want to make any pro­nounce­ments or as­sump­tions be­fore speak­ing with UTT.

“I could guar­an­tee you af­ter we meet with them (UTT) and they bring that kind of in­for­ma­tion to us (deficits), the union will have a press con­fer­ence.”


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