Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Af­ter al­most four years of wait­ing and months of protests, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus fi­nal­ly got the green light for the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) to be­gin salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

WIGUT, which rep­re­sents cam­pus staff, was ad­vised of the of­fer from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on Sun­day by Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Rose­marie-Belle An­toine.

Now that the re­mit has been put for­ward, WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that mem­bers will hold their end of the bar­gain and re­lease all ex­am pa­pers.

This means UWI will avoid a ma­jor ex­am dis­rup­tion.

Ex­ams start­ed at the cam­pus yes­ter­day.

Fed up with work­ing on 2014 salaries, staff mem­bers at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus have been protest­ing for the last three months, promis­ing to es­ca­late their ac­tions if ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ued to be stalled. The mem­bers had been wait­ing since 2019 to hear whether salary ne­go­ti­a­tions would be­gin.

Yes­ter­day, Dr Ram­per­sad said they were re­lieved by the news.

“The Prin­ci­pal for­mal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with us yes­ter­day (Sun­day) that she re­ceived the re­mit, but we don’t know the con­tents at this point, so there’s noth­ing to tell. We kept our side of the bar­gain, so as soon as we re­ceived the re­mit, we asked our mem­bers to sub­mit the out­stand­ing ex­am pa­pers by to­day (yes­ter­day),” she told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“There are al­so some is­sues, al­ways prob­lems, you know. Some­times some ex­am pa­pers are sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly if there are elec­tron­ic glitch­es. I con­tact­ed the ex­am­i­na­tion co­or­di­na­tor so that mem­bers who have any chal­lenges can reach out to the ex­am sec­tion and can get as­sis­tance.”

Dr Ram­per­sad added, “I think all’s well that ends well. It’s over. We will now en­ter the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the cam­pus Man­age­ment Ad­vi­so­ry unit on prin­ci­ple.”

Over the week­end, stu­dents were ad­vised by the cam­pus man­age­ment that some ex­ams had to be resched­uled due to the union’s in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, but that they would still take place be­fore the ex­am pe­ri­od ends on May 15.

That, how­ev­er, will, no longer be an is­sue.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, UWI, on be­half of the prin­ci­pal, con­firmed that cam­pus man­age­ment had re­ceived of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for the bar­gain­ing units of the in­sti­tu­tion.

The state­ment said, “The Cam­pus thanks the Min­is­ter and her team, the CPO and in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee. In par­tic­u­lar, it records its ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ho­n­our­ing of the time­line giv­en six weeks ago. WIGUT has been ad­vised of this re­ceipt and as was agreed, it is ex­pect­ed that in­dus­tri­al ac­tion will cease as the par­ties go in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

Now that WIGUT’s in­dus­tri­al ac­tion has ceased, Pro­fes­sor Belle An­toine said she does not an­tic­i­pate any fur­ther dis­rup­tion to this se­mes­ter’s ex­am­i­na­tions.

“Due to our statu­to­ry re­quire­ments for no­tices in re­la­tion to ex­am­i­na­tions, the cam­pus had al­ready com­plied on Fri­day night and is­sued no­tices of changed sched­ules to 31 ex­am­i­na­tions for which pa­pers were out­stand­ing. “These new dates will stand. The pa­pers now be­ing re­ceived will be processed with the same in­tegri­ty and care that is the norm for the hold­ing of UWI ex­am­i­na­tions,” the cam­pus Prin­ci­pal ad­vised.

Com­ment­ing on this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, act­ing pres­i­dent of the UWI St Au­gus­tine Guild of Stu­dents, Kyle Bis­nath, said they too were re­lieved that the protest is now be­hind them. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that the guild will keep “a keen eye” on the progress of ex­ams.

The cam­pus ex­ec­u­tive will now meet with the union to dis­close the re­mit, some­thing Dr Ram­per­sad said they are hop­ing will take place this week.