Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Se­nior Re­porter

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nal ex­ams at the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus could be in jeop­ardy if ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween staff and the gov­ern­ment fail to move for­ward.

The West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) re­ject­ed the gov­ern­ment’s two per cent of­fer five months ago and since then the ne­go­ti­a­tion process has been falling apart. Al­though ex­am pa­pers are due in three weeks and ex­ams are set to start in De­cem­ber, WIGUT Pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said the more than 500 mem­bers of the union are al­ready push­ing back.

It is the sec­ond time this year the union has threat­ened not to ex­e­cute ex­ams be­cause of stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2017. The union spent the months of March and April in protest, call­ing for a re­mit from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and threat­en­ing to with­hold mid-term ex­am pa­pers at the time.

Just days be­fore those ex­ams start­ed, an as­sur­ance was giv­en to the union that the of­fer would be pro­vid­ed and they went ahead to sub­mit the pa­pers. By April 23, the two per cent re­mit was giv­en to WIGUT. How­ev­er, by May 4 it was re­ject­ed. The union then met with cam­pus prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine on May 26 to re­quest an im­proved of­fer. For weeks the union said it got no feed­back and wrote a let­ter re­quest­ing an up­date on Ju­ly 17.

“In Ju­ly we didn’t hear any­thing so we wrote her and she said she asked the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for a meet­ing be­cause there was ap­par­ent­ly a tus­sle be­tween the Min­is­ter, the CPO and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion about who was re­al­ly in charge,” Dr Ram­per­sad said.

She said the union was told that as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert over­sees the process, though the cam­pus ex­ec­u­tive in the past has li­aised with the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. WIGUT was al­so told that Im­bert was com­mit­ted to a meet­ing in Au­gust.

“But, as it was Au­gust and it was the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion, and we know what a busy time that was for po­lit­i­cal par­ties and there was no meet­ing be­tween the prin­ci­pal and the min­is­ter,” she stat­ed.

“There are a se­ries of mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed in­clud­ing a shut­down of the cam­pus and all op­er­a­tions like the Li­brary, book­store, mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, stu­dent ser­vices, fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment, of­fices of the prin­ci­pal and deputy.”

Dr Ram­per­sad added: “There are go­ing to be fi­nal ex­ams start­ing in De­cem­ber and many of the ex­am pa­pers are due in No­vem­ber and we have al­so called for staff to not par­tic­i­pate in grad­u­a­tion and prize-giv­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at the end of the month.”

The WIGUT pres­i­dent said she is aware of the con­se­quences of their ac­tions on the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion but point­ed out that staff have not been able to cope with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing. She ref­er­enced the coun­cil’s lat­est re­port which showed that the cam­pus has record­ed a 22 per cent at­tri­tion from aca­d­e­mics.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Pro­fes­sor Belle An­toine ad­mit­ted that the sit­u­a­tion is wor­ry­ing.

“Of course, I must be con­cerned. Any prin­ci­pal se­ri­ous about qual­i­ty as­sur­ance and about the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try will be con­cerned be­cause the rea­son for the re­duc­tion in aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er staff, in­clud­ing re­search, the rea­son for that is be­cause of fi­nan­cial con­straints,” she said.

The prin­ci­pal said she could not com­ment fur­ther on WIGUT’s ac­tions and the state of ne­go­ti­a­tions but promised to ad­dress them on Fri­day when the union holds a protest at the cam­pus.

UWI St Au­gus­tine Guild of Stu­dents Pres­i­dent Aish­warya Ma­haraj al­so de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter but said they are com­mit­ted to “ad­vo­cat­ing for the stu­dents’ best in­ter­est in this sit­u­a­tion.”