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Friday, February 28, 2025

UWI lecturers promise ‘fury’ in February

Threaten to withhold exam papers as new semester starts

by

KAY-MARIE FLETCHER
38 days ago
20250121

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus might not have any ex­ams to look for­ward to at the end of this se­mes­ter, as the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) is threat­en­ing to with­hold ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers if Gov­ern­ment does give them their promised salary in­creas­es.

As aca­d­e­m­ic, se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tive and pro­fes­sion­al staff re­sumed protest ac­tion yes­ter­day, which was the start of the new se­mes­ter, WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad re­it­er­at­ed the frus­tra­tion of staff still work­ing on 2014 salaries.

Ram­per­sad said next week will be a week of “rest and re­lax­ing,” while lec­tur­ers can al­so choose not to at­tend class­es next week if they aren’t sat­is­fied. If there’s still si­lence on the Gov­ern­ment’s part by next month, they plan to es­ca­late their ac­tions with a black­out as part of what they have la­belled “Feb­ru­ary Fury”.

Ram­per­sad again threat­ened the with­hold­ing of ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers if their ne­go­ti­a­tions are not dealt with.

“It’s one thing not to get marks for se­mes­ter one, but it’s an­oth­er not to get a ques­tion pa­per for se­mes­ter two be­cause you won’t even have an ex­am,” she said.

She said “the faster the Gov­ern­ment re­solves this is­sue, the faster the cam­pus will re­turn to nor­mal­cy.”

WIGUT mem­bers con­verged on the of­fice of cam­pus prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie An­toine, de­mand­ing an­swers dur­ing a protest yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, An­toine ad­mit­ted she too was wait­ing on Gov­ern­ment to fol­low through with its com­mit­ment to not on­ly pay staff but al­so pay over $1.4 bil­lion in out­stand­ing fees to the uni­ver­si­ty.

While she ad­mit­ted UWI is the low­est paid amongst ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions in the re­gion, she said she has no con­trol over salaries.

“We are at the mer­cy of Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment be­cause cam­pus man­age­ment, as you know, can­not give you an in­crease... How­ev­er you turn, we are in a very dif­fi­cult straight jack­et po­si­tion. It’s dif­fi­cult for cam­pus man­age­ment to ma­noeu­vre in this sit­u­a­tion, so I re­al­ly want to im­plore all of those, the pow­ers of be, let’s just bring this to an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion,” An­toine told union mem­bers.

“I don’t know if it will be a hap­py so­lu­tion. But, at least some­thing that is rea­son­able be­cause it re­al­ly can­not con­tin­ue. I took the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment in good faith, and as a gen­uine de­sire to set­tle this. We know that we can’t ex­pect an out­landish in­crease, but I do think cer­tain­ly more than the two per cent. At this point, I do be­lieve that we do need to move in that di­rec­tion.”

In terms of course reg­is­tra­tions, she said the uni­ver­si­ty will ex­tend the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line for stu­dents and al­le­vi­ate late fees for this se­mes­ter.

While WIGUT in­sists their ac­tions are not tar­get­ed to­ward stu­dents, the UWI Guild says it is pre­pared to take ac­tion to get their grades.

Guild pres­i­dent Josef Paty said while they un­der­stand the plight of the lec­tur­ers and staff, who de­serve high­er wages, it can­not sup­port protest ac­tion if it neg­a­tive­ly af­fects stu­dents.

He al­so re­vealed that the guild will be writ­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert on the is­sue.

Paty said, “This has more im­pli­ca­tions than peo­ple recog­nise. Some stu­dents can’t reg­is­ter for cours­es and it’s not to say that some of those cours­es will be of­fered dur­ing the sum­mer, so that means that some peo­ple will have to re­peat an­oth­er year. If stu­dents do not get to do their fi­nal ex­ams, it means those fi­nal year stu­dents like my­self, won’t get to grad­u­ate. Those are some sig­nif­i­cant is­sues that will af­fect the stu­dents. Not to men­tion, no one is speak­ing about the men­tal as­pect of it. Stu­dents who just came out of com­plet­ing five or six cours­es, now can­not get feed­back on what they’ve done. That’s se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous men­tal stress.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to get an up­date on the mat­ter were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.


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