Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Lo­cal an­i­ma­tor Camille Selvon-Abra­hams has de­nied she used the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) soft­ware to make a milk ad­ver­tise­ment for a com­pa­ny of which she is a di­rec­tor. Selvon-Abra­hams re­fut­ed the claim one week af­ter UTT failed to re­new her con­tract as pro­gramme di­rec­tor and lead lec­tur­er in an­i­ma­tion at the uni­ver­si­ty.

It was UTT's hu­man re­source de­part­ment de­ci­sion to not re­new Selvon-Abra­hams' con­tract be­cause her func­tion, should she stay, would change to that of a teacher.On Au­gust 7, Selvon-Abra­hams dis­missed that Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tion Stu­dio, a com­pa­ny she found­ed in 2002, of which she is a di­rec­tor used UTT's soft­ware to make the Moo milk ad­ver­tise­ment.

She said then that the ad­ver­tise­ment was made at the stu­dio's Ca­roni of­fice and not UTT's John Don­ald­son Port-of-Spain cam­pus."I nev­er used their (UTT) soft­ware at all. Nev­er. That is to be cor­rupt. It's fraud," Selvon-Abra­hams said.She said the stu­dio, which fo­cus­es on an­i­ma­tion, new-me­dia pro­duc­tion and train­ing has far more su­pe­ri­or equip­ment than UTT's.

"Their equip­ment (UTT) is not suit­able for pro­duc­tion. Why would I go to John D to do an ad when there is a func­tion­ing, state-of-the-art stu­dio at Ca­roni?"She said the stu­dio was a rep­utable com­pa­ny that did work for Cari­com and Un­esco."I am not about pol­i­tics," she said.

Asked if be­ing a UTT em­ploy­ee and a di­rec­tor of the stu­dio was a con­flict of in­ter­est, Selvon-Abra­hams said when UTT in­ter­viewed her for the job in 2008, she de­clared the stu­dio up front with then pres­i­dent of the uni­ver­si­ty Prof Ken Julien, who did not ob­ject.How­ev­er, three years lat­er, ques­tions were raised about the stu­dio un­der UTT's act­ing pres­i­dent Rod­ney Ja­gai be­ing a con­flict of in­ter­est.

Selvon-Abra­hams said she had to face a UTT pan­el, who ques­tioned her for 90 min­utes about the stu­dio and its op­er­a­tions."The mat­ter was even­tu­al­ly dropped. It wasn't seen as a con­flict of in­ter­est. These sorts of ac­cu­sa­tions are not new."She said nu­mer­ous let­ters were sent to UTT re­quest­ing an au­di­ence with its board based on al­le­ga­tions raised.

"But it was to­tal­ly ig­nored."The lat­est com­ing out of UTT is Selvon-Abra­hams be­ing se­lect­ed last Ju­ly by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) to for­mu­late a draft syl­labus for the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) for the sub­ject an­i­ma­tion and game de­sign.Selvon-Abra­hams said UTT was no­ti­fied by CXC of her ap­point and her func­tions and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Was this too seen as a con­flict of in­ter­est?"What is wrong with a UTT mem­ber be­ing se­lect­ed for in­put in a ground-break­ing CXC syl­labus? I should have been cel­e­brat­ed for this, not vil­i­fied."She in­sist­ed that she was not paid by CXC for her ser­vices, but re­ceived a small stipend which cov­ered her ho­tel ex­pens­es.

CXC al­so paid for her flight.If UTT felt it would have been a con­flict of in­ter­est, Selvon-Abra­hams said they could have for­ward­ed a let­ter to CXC and "told them no."She said this was not done."I have all my let­ters to show...all this will come out in court. I am baf­fled."Ques­tioned if she used ex­ple­tives when told that her con­tract would not be re­newed, Selvon-Abra­hams said: "Those words can­not come out of my mouth. I was an­gry and dis­ap­point­ed. I don't use ex­ple­tives."

She, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that she re­fused to hand over UTT's com­put­er and pushed her chair af­ter four strapped men ap­proached her desk to es­cort her out of UTT's com­pound.Selvon-Abra­hams said if UTT had fol­lowed due process "this could have been avoid­ed. I do be­lieve be­cause I stood up against them I am here to­day."

Though Selvon-Abra­hams is still on UTT's pay­roll, she has been of­fered sev­er­al an­i­ma­tion jobs, some of which are re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly."For me this is not about a job. It's about prin­ci­ple and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sec­tor. I have a choice and I am go­ing to be se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing my fu­ture."