The Col­lege of Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT) is pay­ing $11,250 a month to lease a build­ing in San­gre Grande as a cam­pus but the fa­cil­i­ty is not be­ing used.

With­out a sin­gle les­son be­ing taught and with­out a sin­gle chair be­ing oc­cu­pied, $56,250 of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey has al­ready been spent.

As a re­sult of the in­op­er­al­i­sa­tion of the cam­pus, many stu­dents from far-flung ar­eas are left in­con­ve­nienced.

“They are pay­ing for the build­ing and they are not in it. The stu­dents have to go down to COSTAATT in Ch­agua­nas etc. Think about how it’s af­fect­ing stu­dents who live in To­co or Matelot–who prob­a­bly don’t even know that COSTAATT has ac­quired a space,” one source said.

“They closed down the El Do­ra­do Cam­pus, so we have no COSTAATT cam­pus in this whole east-west Cor­ri­dor…We are pay­ing rent every month. They claim the Gov­ern­ment doesn’t have mon­ey to out­fit the build­ing.”

COSTAATT pre­vi­ous­ly rent­ed an­oth­er build­ing in the area for $80,000 per month for nine years, from 2012 to 2021. But due to the im­pact of COVID and fi­nan­cial con­straints faced by the in­sti­tu­tion there was need for a small­er space.

Sources said that COSTAATT en­tered in­to the new lease agree­ment with J De Fre­itas and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in Jan­u­ary but the build­ing is yet to be oc­cu­pied be­cause there is out­stand­ing out­fit­ting work.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, the San­gre Grande build­ing, now be­ing rent­ed by COSTAATT, was pre­vi­ous­ly rent­ed by an­oth­er gov­ern­ment agency, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO), how­ev­er, NID­CO moved out.

Ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er source, while peo­ple may view the rental amount as in­signif­i­cant when one adds up the thou­sands of dol­lars that turn in­to mil­lions in state prop­er­ty rentals all over the coun­try, it is sig­nif­i­cant wastage.

The source said that the mon­ey wast­ed could be used to im­prove the lives of poor fam­i­lies, health­care or to fund hos­pi­tals.

“Why did you rent it in the first place? Why did you even close down the El Do­ra­do Cam­pus, so stu­dents from this area have to go to Ch­agua­nas and Port-of-Spain…These peo­ple don’t come down to the grass­roots peo­ple and hear how they’re suf­fer­ing. They are to­tal­ly out of touch, and they do their wheel­ing and deal­ing in their lit­tle firms and all is well for them,” a source com­plained.

Dr Gillian Paul: We are try­ing to out­fit the build­ing

In re­sponse to the claims of wastage, COSTAATT Pres­i­dent Dr Gillian Paul con­firmed that the San­gre Grande build­ing is not cur­rent­ly op­er­a­tional, but she said the col­lege was try­ing to out­fit the build­ing.

She said the col­lege was hav­ing ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial con­straints, and has down­sized op­er­a­tions to bring it in line with the fund­ing it is re­ceiv­ing.

“The build­ing in Grande is less ex­pen­sive for us than the old site, but it has to be outf­fit­ed, so we can fa­cil­i­tate the nurs­ing stu­dents in par­tic­u­lar who were en­rolled in

large num­bers in San­gre Grande for labs. And that in­volves some re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of the floor plan and be­cause of the quan­tum of fund­ing in­volved, we did not have at the time–we got a board de­ci­sion to rent the fa­cil­i­ty. We tried to pro­vide shut­tle ser­vices. We didn’t ac­tu­al­ly have the fund­ing for that ei­ther,” Dr Paul said to the Sun­day Guardian last Wednes­day.

“We have just got some GATE cheques this month to work on that. We’ve done the ten­der and every­thing. We just have to get the fi­nance com­mit­tee’s ap­proval to ex­e­cute…We be­lieve the fa­cil­i­ty should be avail­able for use well in ad­vance of the new se­mes­ter…For a long pe­ri­od of time all we re­ceived was salary-re­lat­ed mon­ey. So mon­ey for op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es we have to try and pay from GATE and fees, and we do know that our stu­dents have their fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.”

Sun­day Guardian spoke with sev­er­al COSTAATT stu­dents who, fol­low­ing the shut­down of the col­lege’s El Do­ra­do Cam­pus and the con­tin­ued clo­sure of the San­gre Grande rental build­ing, are forced to trav­el long dis­tances to at­tend lab class­es.

One stu­dent said she trav­els to COSTAATT’s Ch­agua­nas Cam­pus from Man­zanil­la every Wednes­day for her 8 am to 11 am class, as well as every Thurs­day for her 2 pm to 5 pm class. Each trip costs $96 in trans­porta­tion.

“I al­so have to leave home at 5 am to reach 8 am, and when I leave Ch­agua­nas at 5 pm, I reach home af­ter nine at night,” she said.

An­oth­er stu­dent said she dri­ves every Tues­day from Ma­yaro to Ch­agua­nas for class­es. The trip costs her more than $100 in gas, she claimed.

“I told my lec­tur­er last week that he owes me $600 for gas be­cause it was the third time I ar­rived at school and class­es were can­celled,” she said.

A third stu­dent said she trav­els to Ch­agua­nas for class­es from Fish­ing Pond, San­gre Grande, every Mon­day. It costs her $85 per trip.

Two nurs­ing stu­dents said with the Grande cam­pus in­op­er­a­tional, they have to do labs in San Fer­nan­do or Ch­agua­nas.

They claimed that stipends that used to help stu­dents with costs are no longer giv­en, and haven’t been paid in ap­prox­i­mate­ly a year.

Once a month she makes the trip to ei­ther San Fer­nan­do or Ch­agua­nas.

“To Ch­agua­nas, it takes about one-and-a-half hours with traf­fic and costs $80 and you have to leave home ex­tra ear­ly. To San Fer­nan­do, two hours and $95 in pas­sage. Plus, if we reach ear­ly, we have to stay out­side in a car park be­cause of COVID-19,” a nurs­ing stu­dent said.

“We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mind pay­ing that mon­ey once a month. Our prob­lem is more that we have to go on the wards four to five days per week. We are not get­ting a stipend. We al­so have to be on­line sub­mit­ting as­sign­ments and work…I’m a moth­er. I have an adopt­ed child. My cousin got killed, so that’s two kids I have to see about. I have to work a night job. I live in Man­zanil­la and I work in Mar­aval. It’s dif­fi­cult be­cause they aren’t pay­ing us stipends. It would be eas­i­er if they paid us stipends,” she lament­ed.

An­oth­er stu­dent in the clin­i­cal field said she was pre­vi­ous­ly as­signed to the San­gre Grande Cam­pus, but since it closed, she has been re­as­signed to the Ch­agua­nas Cam­pus.

The San­gre Grande res­i­dent trav­els at least six times per se­mes­ter to the Ch­agua­nas cam­pus for $110 per trip.

“We have not got­ten paid our stipends for over a year and be­cause we are full-time tu­dents, we are not al­lowed to work while do­ing clin­i­cal, or you won’t be paid. Be­cause we are not get­ting paid the stipend, the mon­ey to trav­el to the hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres has to come out of our pock­ets,” the stu­dent com­plained.

“They said since De­cem­ber 2020 that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry was sup­posed to take over the pay­ment of stipends, how­ev­er, up to to­day no in­for­ma­tion was sent to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.”

COSTAATT’s San­gre Grande Cam­pus, ac­cord­ing to the Col­lege’s web­site, hous­es pro­grammes of­fered by the School of Nurs­ing, Health and En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences, the School of Busi­ness and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nolo­gies, the School of Lib­er­al Arts and Hu­man Ser­vices, as well as the School of Con­tin­u­ing Ed­u­ca­tion and Life­long Learn­ing.