Shal­iza Has­sanali

Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (MSTTE) Fazal Karim is work­ing fever­ish­ly to es­tab­lish a pol­i­cy frame­work to pro­vide rent sub­si­dies to all ter­tiary stu­dents. Karim made the dis­clo­sure yes­ter­day at a con­sul­ta­tion with land­lords who are be­ing ac­cused by uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents of pro­vid­ing poor ac­com­mo­da­tion at as­tro­nom­i­cal rentals. At­tend­ing the open dis­cus­sion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine were scores of land­lords, UWI's prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat, pres­i­dent of UWI's Un­der­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Guild Hillan More­an and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, the MP for St Au­gus­tine. Ad­dress­ing the land­lords, who own prop­er­ty from Trinci­ty to Mt D'Or, Karim ad­mit­ted that pro­vi­sion of ac­com­mo­da­tion for uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents is left large­ly to mar­ket forces.

Of the 15,462 stu­dents en­rolled at UWI, Karim said, there is need for ac­com­mo­da­tion for 14,000 UWI stu­dents and those ac­cess­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion with­in the St Au­gus­tine dis­trict. Karim said while the uni­ver­si­ty has es­tab­lished mech­a­nisms to reg­is­ter land­lords, "there ex­ist no mech­a­nisms to mon­i­tor prices, en­sure qual­i­ty ac­com­mo­da­tion, min­imise se­cu­ri­ty anx­i­ety or seek the in­ter­ests of the land­lords and stu­dents." In the near fu­ture, Karim said, the MSTTE and the Health Min­istry will es­tab­lish a com­mit­tee that will make rec­om­men­da­tions to es­tab­lish mech­a­nisms for the pro­vi­sion of sub­si­dies "on rents to all stu­dents re­sid­ing in the re­gion and who are reg­is­tered at ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions in the area."

The com­mit­tee will al­so es­tab­lish qual­i­ty stan­dards for rank­ing stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion and for meet­ing safe­ty re­quire­ments of stu­dents. Karim al­so ad­mit­ted that se­cu­ri­ty in and around UWI had be­come an is­sue, which he would have to be ad­dress. Ra­mad­har said Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing ex­pand­ing the num­ber of apart­ment units at UWI and erect­ing build­ings off cam­pus to deal with the high rental fee stu­dents are forced to pay. Ra­mad­har said what adds to the prob­lem is the laps­ing by the Rent As­sess­ment Board. "We na­tion­al­ly had to de­bate the is­sue if this coun­try would go in­to a free mar­ket in terms of rent or rent re­stric­tion."

Ra­mad­har said he would like to see free mar­ket forces de­ter­mine rents. At­tor­ney Kelvin Ramkissoon said for far too long stu­dents of St Au­gus­tine have been short-changed by land­lords, call­ing on Ra­mad­har to in­crease the qual­i­ty and in­tegri­ty of ac­com­mo­da­tion.

Land­lords who spoke, raised the is­sue of in­ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty, a prop­er shut­tle ser­vice for stu­dents, flood­ing and even em­pha­sised a bet­ter part­ner­ship be­tween the stu­dent body and them­selves.