Lec­tur­ers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus yes­ter­day made good on their threat to with­hold ex­am scripts.

The de­ci­sion to with­hold the pa­pers was the lat­est act of de­fi­ance from mem­bers of the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT), af­ter they re­ject­ed a pro­posed two per cent salary in­crease by the Gov­ern­ment.

Teach­ing and se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tive staff at the UWI have not had a salary in­crease since 2014.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a demon­stra­tion at the cam­pus yes­ter­day, WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said the dead­line for lec­tur­ers to sub­mit the ex­am scripts was at 4.30 pm that af­ter­noon.

De­scrib­ing the two per cent of­fer as “in­de­cent”, Ram­per­sad warned that re­fusal to sub­mit the ques­tion pa­pers to UWI’s ex­am sec­tion could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for stu­dents.

“They (the ex­am sec­tion) do the nec­es­sary in terms of print­ing, copy­ing and what not to start an ex­am in De­cem­ber, but if there are no ex­am pa­pers to copy and to give stu­dents to dis­trib­ute, there can be no ex­ams.

So, if there are no sub­mis­sions of ex­ams, there will be no grades come Jan­u­ary 5. So col­leagues, un­less some­thing gives this is the po­si­tion of WIGUT and we ex­pect your sup­port,” she stat­ed.

Ram­per­sad said while such a de­ci­sion would in­con­ve­nience stu­dents, she stressed it was not WIGUT’s in­ten­tion to cause un­nec­es­sary dis­tress.

She not­ed that de­spite the con­cerns of staff, teach­ing on the cam­pus con­tin­ued un­in­ter­rupt­ed, but said any dis­rup­tion to stu­dents re­ceiv­ing their ex­ams was un­for­tu­nate but nec­es­sary.

“The stu­dents have nev­er been our tar­gets.

We are giv­ing the stu­dents their ed­u­ca­tion. We have the ex­am pa­pers ready. Once they tell us we are get­ting some­thing rea­son­able and ac­cept­able we are go­ing to sub­mit the ex­ams,” she said.

“The stu­dents will be anx­ious and un­easy but when TTEC blacks out all of us suf­fer, such is the na­ture of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.”

Ram­per­sad said the cam­pus prin­ci­pal, Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, passed WIGUT’s for­mal re­jec­tion of the two per cent of­fer to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who in turn for­ward­ed it to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert.

She said the di­rect in­volve­ment of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was an un­usu­al de­vel­op­ment, as their main point of con­tact has been through the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

De­spite this, she was cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that Im­bert, be­ing a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of WIGUT, would un­der­stand their con­cerns and seek to re­solve the is­sue as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

“We are ap­peal­ing to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, as a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of WIGUT and the Prime Min­is­ter, that they iden­ti­fy with our cause. They know ex­act­ly what it is like to be in this strug­gle, they were there in the front­line and they were there right where we are now, so we have that good sense pre­vails and they will un­der­stand what we are go­ing through.

“We have been suf­fer­ing since 2014, we are on 2014 salaries. The cost of liv­ing is ris­ing, in­fla­tion is ris­ing,” she added.

WIGUT mem­bers marched from the greens of the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre (LRC) to the of­fice of the cam­pus prin­ci­pal while be­ing led by a tas­sa band.

Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, who was in a meet­ing, did not ad­dress the group. How­ev­er, cam­pus reg­is­trar Dawn-Marie De Four-Gill met the group and con­firmed re­ceipt of the re­jec­tion let­ter from WIGUT.

The group then marched to the cam­pus ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing be­fore march­ing back to the greens where they dis­persed.

In a state­ment sent to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day, the UWI Guild of Stu­dents said it was un­for­tu­nate stu­dents were caught in the mid­dle of the im­passe.

The guild al­so called on both par­ties to come to a rea­son­able con­clu­sion, not­ing that a re­cent meet­ing with the WIGUT to re­solve the is­sue was un­suc­cess­ful.

“We will con­tin­ue to voice our dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the cur­rent ac­tions and their detri­men­tal ef­fects on stu­dents. We call up­on all par­ties in­volved to ex­pe­dite the res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion. Our com­mit­ment to our mem­bers is un­wa­ver­ing, and we will per­sist in seek­ing a prompt and just res­o­lu­tion,” it stat­ed.