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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

UWI St Augustine executive team urges Govt, WIGUT to resume negotiations

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
236 days ago
20241121
FILE – The main entrance to the Administration Building of the UWI St Augustine Campus in Trinidad.

FILE – The main entrance to the Administration Building of the UWI St Augustine Campus in Trinidad.

The Cam­pus Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment Team of The UWI St. Au­gus­tine is urg­ing Gov­ern­ment ne­go­tia­tors and mem­bers of the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, so that the cur­rent im­passe can be brought to sat­is­fac­to­ry con­clu­sion.

The call comes as WIGUT mem­bers re­sumed protest ac­tion at the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus this month.

“We, there­fore, urge all par­ties to move this process for­ward pro­duc­tive­ly and swift­ly, en­sur­ing a res­o­lu­tion that ben­e­fits not on­ly our staff, but al­so the stu­dents who de­pend on the sta­bil­i­ty and ex­cel­lence of The UWI ex­pe­ri­ence,” the Cam­pus Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment Team said in an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day.

In the re­lease, the Team ac­knowl­edged the right of WIGUT mem­bers to protest, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that wage ne­go­ti­a­tions on the oth­er UWI cam­pus­es—Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica—have con­clud­ed.

“Both Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos and Mona, Ja­maica, which be­gan ne­go­ti­a­tions long af­ter St. Au­gus­tine, have con­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly and re­ceived gen­er­ous in­creas­es. Those coun­tries recog­nised the valu­able con­tri­bu­tions that the UWI con­tin­ues to bring to their coun­tries and re­gion, con­tribut­ing di­rect­ly to the GDP,” the Team’s state­ment ob­served.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, “St. Au­gus­tine staff re­mains the poor­est in the UWI­verse. The re­sult is in­creas­ing at­tri­tion of staff and in­creased dif­fi­cul­ty to at­tract qual­i­ty staff.”

The Ex­ec­u­tive Team stat­ed that while it un­der­stands “the frus­tra­tion of our staff stem­ming from the decade-long de­lay in re­solv­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions”, it al­so is con­cerned about the im­pact on the cam­pus’ stu­dents, “who are the ones most im­pact­ed by such ac­tion”, not­ing that “it dis­rupts their aca­d­e­m­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, cre­at­ing anx­i­ety dur­ing a crit­i­cal time.”

The re­lease from the Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment Team re­ports that the Team “has been fol­low­ing up dili­gent­ly on out­stand­ing pro­pos­als” for more than two years. It points to “the lack of con­crete re­spons­es” from Gov­ern­ment, notwith­stand­ing “pos­i­tive as­sur­ances in the na­tion­al Bud­get and in meet­ings.”

“Fur­ther, the Cam­pus Man­age­ment's op­tions are lim­it­ed,” the re­lease states, “giv­en that Gov­ern­ment pays salaries and as is well known, our own acute fi­nan­cial cri­sis, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by huge debts owed to us and de­creased sub­ven­tions.”

The Team reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment “to di­a­logue with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­solve this im­passe.”


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