SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) plans to make sig­nif­i­cant bud­get cuts as it charts the way for­ward in a COVID-19 world.

Vice-chan­cel­lor Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he de­liv­ered his re­port on the uni­ver­si­ty’s fu­ture op­er­a­tion in a live broad­cast on UWItv.

Beck­les said UWI will soon be pre­sent­ing COVID bud­gets that will see mas­sive cuts in its ex­pen­di­ture to its Uni­ver­si­ty Grants Com­mit­tee (UGC) for ap­proval.

He said the virus has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the Caribbean re­gion and there would be no avoid­ing these ram­i­fi­ca­tions for how Caribbean peo­ple con­duct their lives go­ing for­ward.

“There is no doubt that the gov­ern­ments and peo­ple of this re­gion must con­tin­ue to see this pan­dem­ic as an ex­is­ten­tial threat to Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion,” Beck­les said.

He said the re­gion is now fac­ing a “triple C” threat—of cli­mate change, chron­ic dis­ease and COVID-19.

“This re­gion has lost over US$30 bil­lion in the last five years on ac­count of the chal­lenges of hur­ri­canes. We are los­ing some US$1.5 bil­lion a year in our con­tain­ment and man­age­ment of the chron­ic dis­ease pan­dem­ic and COVID-19 is es­ti­mat­ed to dec­i­mate some 20 per cent of the re­gion’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) ac­count­ing for near US$16 bil­lion,” Beck­les said.

He said with all the is­sues fac­ing the re­gion and its gov­ern­ments strug­gling to cope, the uni­ver­si­ty is still owed mon­ey from dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments and has been op­er­at­ing on a deficit in its con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial ac­counts.

Beck­les said the uni­ver­si­ty in­tends to keep an in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship with the gov­ern­ments in the re­gion to work out these fi­nan­cial is­sues.

How­ev­er, he said at a re­treat six months be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the uni­ver­si­ty’s man­age­ment de­cid­ed to cut its ex­pen­di­ture from crit­i­cal ar­eas of its op­er­a­tion.

“We came out of that re­treat with a vi­sion to cut our ex­pen­di­ture by ten per cent in the next two years. That was pre-COVID. Now we are faced with an even more dif­fi­cult and in­sid­i­ous cir­cum­stance. We looked at how we could se­cu­ri­tise our re­ceiv­ables to en­sure fund­ing still flows in­to the uni­ver­si­ty and that is still un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.”

He said with the pan­dem­ic sweep­ing the globe, the Uni­ver­si­ty Grants Com­mit­tee met and a de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­struc­ture the way it op­er­ates dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Beck­les said the UWI is al­ready feel­ing the crunch of a lack of fund­ing.

“We will come back to the UGC with COVID bud­gets, we will cut our ex­pen­di­ture sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as our gov­ern­ments will ex­pect us to do,” he said.

“We will do this and we will bring new COVID bud­gets back to the UGC for ap­proval. And then to be­gin the process of rolling out a new era, a fu­ture in which we man­age our uni­ver­si­ty re­sources, poli­cies and pro­grammes skil­ful­ly help­ing the in­sti­tu­tion to main­tain its glob­al sta­tus while work­ing hand-in-glove with the gov­ern­ments’ fis­cal and fi­nan­cial pa­ra­me­ters.”

Beck­les al­so paid trib­ute to the staff of the uni­ver­si­ty’s Sci­ence, Med­i­cine, Hu­man­i­ties and So­cial Sci­ences fac­ul­ties who have mo­bilised over the past three months to form a COVID-19 task force.

He said this mo­bil­i­sa­tion showed that when­ev­er the re­gion is threat­ened, the uni­ver­si­ty can mo­bilise at a high­er lev­el to as­sist.