The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) which once en­joyed a fi­nan­cial sur­plus and re­cruit­ed acad­e­mia and con­sul­tants to bol­ster the uni­ver­si­ty’s op­er­a­tions has now land­ed in the red, with staff hav­ing to pay the price, as hun­dreds have been sent home.

Records showed over a 20-month pe­ri­od UTT would have spent be­tween $18 and $26 mil­lion to main­tain 48 tem­po­rary aca­d­e­m­ic staff on its pay­roll.

In ad­di­tion, the uni­ver­si­ty al­so paid ex­or­bi­tant dai­ly fees amount­ing to mil­lions of dol­lars to sev­en con­tract­ed con­sul­tants to pro­vide sup­port in a num­ber of ar­eas.

Out­side of the 55 re­cruits, UTT had to pay over 1,000 staff mem­bers plus non-staff costs.

Of­fi­cials at UTT be­lieve this wan­ton spend­ing could have led the uni­ver­si­ty to fall in a fi­nan­cial hole that they could not climb out of, forc­ing them to cut staff long be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic crip­pled the econ­o­my.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, UTT’s new­ly ap­point­ed chair­man Prof Clement Im­bert ad­mit­ted he had al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed that UTT should not have hired ad­di­tion­al staff, but when Prof Ken Julien came with sug­ges­tions, the board would agree.

In June, Julien was re­moved as UTT’s chair­man fol­low­ing a re­struc­tur­ing of the board and re­placed by Im­bert.

The is­sue of the hir­ings was raised on June 26, 2017, in Par­lia­ment, when then Ch­agua­nas East MP Fazal Karim asked then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia un­der whose purview UTT fell, to pro­vide a writ­ten re­sponse to a list of per­sons, their po­si­tions and re­mu­ner­a­tion UTT had re­tained as aca­d­e­m­ic staff and con­sul­tants from Oc­to­ber 2015 to date.

A copy of the writ­ten re­sponse pro­vid­ed by Par­lia­ment showed that UTT had re­tained 48 aca­d­e­m­ic staff- three in­struc­tors 1, nine in­struc­tors II, 19 se­nior in­struc­tors, 11 as­sis­tant pro­fes­sors, two as­so­ciate pro­fes­sors and four pro­fes­sors from Oc­to­ber 2015 to May 2017 to “bol­ster the de­liv­ery of the in­sti­tu­tion’s aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes.”

The doc­u­ment re­vealed an in­struc­tor 1 re­ceived a salary be­tween $12,000 to $15,000, an in­struc­tor II was paid be­tween $15,000 to $18,000, a se­nior in­struc­tor’s salary fell with­in the brack­et $18,000 to $28,000, an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor col­lect­ed be­tween $22,000 to $32,000, the pay of an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor was be­tween $24,000 to $34,000 while the nu­mer­a­tion of a pro­fes­sor ranged be­tween $35,000 to $45,0000.

Dur­ing the 20 months the aca­d­e­m­ic staff worked for the uni­ver­si­ty, UTT paid be­tween $18.8 mil­lion and $26.7 mil­lion.

The doc­u­ment al­so re­port­ed that UTT re­tained sev­en con­tract­ed con­sul­tants, some of whom re­ceived a “dai­ly fee” of $3,000, $2,750 and $2,000 for a va­ri­ety of ser­vices ren­dered to the uni­ver­si­ty.

The names of the con­sul­tants were list­ed as David Bha­jan, Lennard Prescod, Cedric Con­nor, Ken­neth Butch­er, Col­in Steven­son, David Mc Gaw and Natasha David.

Bha­jan who was as­signed to cov­er mat­ters re­lat­ing to cap­i­tal projects, main­te­nance and re­lat­ed op­er­a­tions worked from No­vem­ber 17, 2015 to May 17, 2016 at a dai­ly fee of “$2,750 as re­quired,” cur­rent­ly serves as UTT’s as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent in­fra­struc­ture and main­te­nance.

He al­so worked as UTT’s vice pres­i­dent of cap­i­tal projects and in­sti­tu­tion­al plan­ning.

Prescod who served from No­vem­ber 17, 2015 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2017 was paid a dai­ly fee of “$2,750 as re­quired” han­dling mat­ters re­lat­ing to gov­er­nance and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment sys­tems.

Con­nor whose pe­ri­od of en­gage­ment was the same as Prescod dealt with mat­ters re­lat­ing to hu­man re­sources and or­gan­i­sa­tion de­vel­op­ment for a dai­ly fee of $2,500 as re­quired.

Re­tained from Ju­ly 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2016, Butch­er was paid $3,000 a day to re­view sports pro­grammes de­liv­ered by the Acad­e­my of Sport and Recre­ation.

Steven­son served from June 21 to 29 in 2016 and on Au­gust 11,15 and 22, 2016 at a dai­ly rate of £350 to pro­vide sup­port to mar­itime pro­grammes as well as “to in­ter­view in­struc­tors and meet­ing with UTT chair­man in Lon­don.”

Mc Gaw re­ceived a dai­ly fee of $2,000 as re­quired for 12 days for as­sess­ment of the aca­d­e­m­ic staff for cur­rent teach­ing pro­grammes and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of needs in the pro­fes­so­r­i­al ranks.

From No­vem­ber 16, 2015 to April 30 2016 David re­ceived a month­ly fee of $18,000 while from May 1, 2016 to De­cem­ber 31, 2017 she col­lect­ed $40,000 a month for “ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tance in im­ple­ment­ing and/or co­or­di­nat­ing the dis­charge of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the of­fice of the chair­man.”

In a bid to get more an­swers about the hir­ings, for­mer UTT reg­is­trar Phillip Robin­son sub­mit­ted a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest on Oc­to­ber 18, 2019 to UTT seek­ing:

1) re­quest for pro­pos­als for the sup­ply of con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices iden­ti­fied func­tions,

2) ev­i­dence of a trans­par­ent process to as­sess the in­de­pen­dence/com­pe­tence/suit­abil­i­ty of each of the rec­om­mend­ed con­sul­tants,

3) the en­dorse­ment by the Board of Gov­er­nors (BOG) of the process for se­lec­tion and rec­om­men­da­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the ques­tions on Jan­u­ary 8, 2020, UTT’s se­nior man­ag­er le­gal, Dayle Con­nel­ly wrote, “no re­quest for pro­pos­als was is­sued by the uni­ver­si­ty in re­spect of this par­tic­u­lar con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.”

The con­sul­tants, Con­nel­ly stat­ed “were sin­gle-sourced on the ba­sis of their knowl­edge and work ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­lat­ed field and more so, their his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge of the uni­ver­si­ty” while “the en­gage­ment of the con­sul­tants was rat­i­fied by the BOG at its first meet­ing in De­cem­ber 2015.”

Ear­li­er this month, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that UTT was faced with a $57 mil­lion cash deficit for the fis­cal year 2021, which could re­sult in its 800 plus work­ers hav­ing to take a salary cut.

The news of the 16-year-old UTT’s fi­nan­cial trou­bles was doc­u­ment­ed in a let­ter sent to its act­ing pres­i­dent Prof Prakash Per­sad by fi­nan­cial con­troller Feona Lue Ping Wa in­form­ing him that the uni­ver­si­ty had re­quest­ed a bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of $270 mil­lion pri­or to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert de­liv­er­ing the 2021 fis­cal pack­age on Oc­to­ber 5.

How­ev­er, the uni­ver­si­ty was on­ly al­lo­cat­ed $180 mil­lion which Lue Ping Wa stat­ed, “can­not even meet pay­roll costs (salaries) much less non-pay­roll costs.”

Ques­tioned if UTT has been mis­man­ag­ing its funds and chan­nelling its dwin­dling sub­ven­tions in­to the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Tamana cam­pus which is be­ing built for the last 12 years, Im­bert said the uni­ver­si­ty got “very gen­er­ous sub­ven­tions” years ago.

“And they could not spend it. So UTT end­ed up with a huge sur­plus. But that sur­plus was for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture. And here you had a cam­pus in Tamana lan­guish­ing and could not be fin­ished...and what­ev­er, so, UTT asked for per­mis­sion, quite right­ly to trans­fer some of these re­cur­rent sav­ings to cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture. And that is what hap­pened.”

Pressed if this led to the fi­nan­cial down­fall of UTT, Im­bert replied “who is to an­tic­i­pate that we would get small­er and small­er monies over the years? So here it had this chunk of mon­ey and we took about half of it ...not all of it.”

At that time, he said it was good to have sav­ings.

“If we didn’t have those sav­ings UTT would have been gone through three...four years ago. The sav­ings have evap­o­rat­ed. It’s not a ques­tion of a down­fall.”

He said when UTT be­gan to ex­pand its pro­grammes they had to hire aca­d­e­m­ic staff.

“The aca­d­e­m­ic staff we have at UTT... they are over­loaded. You just have to look at the num­bers of how many cours­es these peo­ple are do­ing. So, if that hap­pened in the past it cer­tain­ly is not hap­pen­ing now.”

Did UTT bad spend mon­ey to hire con­sul­tants and ad­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic staff?

“To at­tract top-lev­el staff UTT paid good mon­ey. UTT had a lot of for­eign staff be­cause we just didn’t have the peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go at the time,” Im­bert said.

When hard times hit UTT, Im­bert said they had to re­duce staff and costs.

He said most uni­ver­si­ties in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ed 80 to 85 per cent by the State.

Many of the for­eign work­ers, he said, have since been re­placed by qual­i­fied lo­cal peo­ple.

But when asked how UTT ar­rived at pay­ing such ex­or­bi­tant dai­ly fees, Im­bert said there was a cap.

“We say a dai­ly rate but you can­not get more than ei­ther $30,000 or $40,000 a month.”

He said the board placed a lot of faith in Julien.

“The chair­man would come with sug­ges­tions and the board would agree. I have al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed that we should not have all these peo­ple. Since tak­ing over in June I told two of the con­sul­tants you’ll have been here for a long time…you used to work here, you can hand over very eas­i­ly… two months just hand over for me.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Im­bert said for­mer Miss Uni­verse Wendy Fitzwilliam’s con­tract came to an end.

Fitzwilliam, he said, helped with “out­reach pro­grammes” and had been as­sist­ing with “mar­ket­ing of the fash­ion pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty” lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

How­ev­er, he said Fitzwilliam con­tin­ues to work pro bono for the uni­ver­si­ty.

“The on­ly con­sul­tant we have there be­cause that is the per­son who does work in the chair­man’s of­fice is Natasha David.”