Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

The fu­ture of UWI stu­dents is in lim­bo, as the work-to-rule ac­tion un­der­tak­en by staff at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus is set to in­ten­si­fy this month.

West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers pres­i­dent, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, said yes­ter­day that while lec­tur­ers spend hours ed­u­cat­ing stu­dents to make some­thing great of them­selves, they are bare­ly able to cov­er their own bills.

“You are sac­ri­fic­ing fi­nan­cial­ly be­cause you could have been do­ing oth­er things to make a lot of mon­ey. We are the most high­ly-qual­i­fied peo­ple in the coun­try with PhDs and mul­ti­ple grad­u­ate de­grees,” Ram­per­sad said dur­ing a protest.

“We have many for­eign mem­bers of staff as well and they have op­por­tu­ni­ties abroad, not just in their home­land, but in oth­er coun­tries. And, many of our sci­en­tists are leav­ing be­cause we can­not pay them. The Fac­ul­ty of Law has seen about six peo­ple leave in re­cent times be­cause they can go in­to pri­vate prac­tice,” she went on to say.

The ap­prox­i­mate­ly 800 mem­bers of staff, both aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic, at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus have been work­ing on 2014 salaries.

Ram­per­sad said there have been sev­er­al at­tempts to ig­nite the ne­go­ti­a­tion process, but a wage in­crease of­fer is yet to reach the ta­ble. The first pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted in 2019 and was based on the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions then.

How­ev­er, the union not­ed that St Au­gus­tine staff is the on­ly group be­hind in their wages.

“Both Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, Cave­hill and Mona cam­pus­es, ac­tu­al­ly en­joy high­er salaries than St Au­gus­tine and Ja­maica has set­tled up to 2021.”

Fol­low­ing WIGUT’s protest two weeks ago, Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine told the union the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) had as­sured that the mat­ter was be­ing ad­dressed.

Armed with their plac­ards, staff marched through the cam­pus yes­ter­day chant­i­ng, “Nine years we are wait­ing, we not get­ting any­thing” to the sound of drums. The protest start­ed at the Dud­ley Hug­gins Build­ing just af­ter noon. Guardian Me­dia was told there were no class­es on the cam­pus dur­ing the time of the ac­tion.

This ac­tion, ac­cord­ing to Ram­per­sad, will be ramped up in the com­ing weeks.

“They will not up­load course marks. They will teach their class­es, but that is it. They’re not do­ing of­fice hours. They’re not meet­ing with stu­dents. Ques­tion pa­pers have to be sub­mit­ted in March for the April ex­ams and the fi­nal ex­ams are be­tween April and May with fi­nal marks due by the end of May. So, if we don’t hear any­thing in March, then we’re not sure if those ex­ams are go­ing to take place,” she warned.

The UWI’s man­age­ment is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day, as­sur­ing staff that there have been on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the CPO and it un­der­stands their anx­i­ety.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, “Salary ne­go­ti­a­tions for all staff, that is, Dai­ly and Week­ly Rat­ed Work­ers, Month­ly paid Ad­min­is­tra­tive Tech­ni­cal and Ser­vice Staff (ATSS), Es­tate Po­lice Per­sons, and Aca­d­e­m­ic, Se­nior Ad­min­is­tra­tive and Pro­fes­sion­al staff (AS­AP) of the cam­pus are on­go­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go via the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO).”

Fur­ther­more, it not­ed, “Cam­pus man­age­ment has shared with all staff that it is await­ing word on the re­mits to en­able the process to go for­ward and notes that there have been on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the CPO to se­cure these re­mits. Man­age­ment will con­tin­ue to en­gage with unions and pro­vide up­dates to staff as they be­come avail­able.”

Re­spond­ing to WIGUT’s ac­tion, UWI Guild vice pres­i­dent Kyle Bis­nath said, “We are aware of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion the coun­try is in and the ef­fects it has on both stu­dents as well as teach­ers. How­ev­er, the Guild will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion at the uni­ver­si­ty. Teach­ers as well as the UWI ad­min­is­tra­tion are urged to have com­pre­hen­sive dis­cus­sions and re­solve the pay raise is­sue quick­ly as the stu­dents are the ones that would be most af­fect­ed.”