Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment will be­gin re­pair work on UWI’s Debe Cam­pus short­ly, says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar.

Show­ing pic­tures from a cam­pus tour by two of her min­is­ters at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Re­port in Pe­nal last night, she said, “We’ll en­gage a con­sul­tant who will then pro­vide an as­sess­ment and scope of work for re­pairs and com­ple­tion of the ex­ist­ing cam­pus.

“The con­sul­tant will be brought on board in Ju­ly. We be­lieve re­pairs can com­mence in Au­gust and con­tin­ue.”

She said it was a shame the way the cam­pus was ne­glect­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­peat­ed her hopes for the cam­pus, as she said the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus was ex­pen­sive to at­tend.

“But my dream was shat­tered when at 85 per cent com­plet­ed, it was shut down for 10 years,” she told the par­ty’s sup­port­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she’s al­so asked for the re­port of the team re­view­ing the Petrotrin re­fin­ery is­sue on Thurs­day.

She added, “The process of ap­point­ing state boards is on­go­ing. It will take a while, so I ap­pre­ci­ate your pa­tience. We’re work­ing on it and are al­so do­ing our best to ful­fil re­quests for jobs with suit­ably qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als.”

The Prime Min­is­ter, who said Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing for­ward with its mod­ernising the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR), asked if a BDO firm was hired to do au­dits and was re­lat­ed to a rel­a­tive of the PNM’s Stu­art Young.

“BIR cur­rent­ly has a staff com­ple­ment of 36 per cent. There are 1,050 posts in the BIR, 375 of which are filled, and 675, va­cant. So, BIR is 64 per cent un­der­staffed. We’ve be­gun staffing and hope to reach a staff com­ple­ment of 75 per cent by Jan­u­ary,” the PM said.