Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) Debe cam­pus will house what the Gov­ern­ment says it will house and the uni­ver­si­ty’s ad­min­is­tra­tion will have no say in that.

That was the stern “shot” from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the UWI ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Do not test me! If I have to do it and if we have to do it, I’ll take that cam­pus back and put it un­der Gov­ern­ment con­trol to make sure we com­plete it!” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at the Ca­bil­do Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.

The PM was com­ment­ing on a de­vel­op­ing face-off be­tween her Gov­ern­ment and UWI man­age­ment re­gard­ing the Debe cam­pus, which her UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment built dur­ing its 2010-15 term at re­port­ed costs of $500 mil­lion-plus.

While in­tend­ed as the new Fac­ul­ty of Law in 2017, Fac­ul­ty staff and stu­dents protest­ed the move to Debe and UWI ad­min­is­tra­tion sub­se­quent­ly de­cid­ed not to re­lo­cate the fac­ul­ty there. It was used by the last Gov­ern­ment as a step-down med­ical fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic.

In 2021, the Uni­ver­si­ty Coun­cil, the high­est gov­ern­ing body of UWI’s re­gion­al sys­tem, ap­proved a de­ci­sion to use the fa­cil­i­ty for the new Glob­al School of Med­i­cine (GSM).

Fol­low­ing a re­cent tour of the fa­cil­i­ty by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal - who de­scribed its state as “hor­rif­ic”—UWI said de­spite very tight fi­nan­cial re­sources, it had pri­ori­tised and pro­ceed­ed with crit­i­cal re­pair work and se­cu­ri­ty en­hance­ments to pre­pare the cam­pus in an­tic­i­pa­tion of phased re­open­ing, be­gin­ning in Au­gust.

It was not­ed that the cam­pus was large­ly un­der­utilised for sev­er­al years and ex­pe­ri­enced nat­ur­al de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in cer­tain ar­eas. UWI said the cam­pus is al­so in­tend­ed to sup­port de­liv­ery of se­lect­ed pro­grammes across mul­ti­ple fac­ul­ties and de­spite protests re­gard­ing the re­lo­ca­tion of the Law Fac­ul­ty, the ad­min­is­tra­tion is open to dis­cus­sions with Gov­ern­ment on its in­clu­sion in planned pro­grammes.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar warned off UWI’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said the Debe cam­pus project is close to her heart, added, “One of the goals of that cam­pus was to ease the bur­den of par­ents who are forced to pay high rentals to­wards rent, food for their chil­dren to come to St Au­gus­tine to spend years.”

She cit­ed crime and traf­fic con­ges­tion to reach St Au­gus­tine and the fact that spaces are lim­it­ed.

“It was al­so to help us earn mon­ey. As we cre­at­ed spaces, stu­dents from out­side would have to pay to come to the uni­ver­si­ty, to rent a house, buy food - so we’d have cre­at­ed some Forex com­ing in­to T&T as well.

“I am from south. Some of you know the high­way ... in those days, all these years it had no high­way, you know. To get in up here you’re spend­ing hours! And you can’t even want to do it on a dai­ly ba­sis; you had to rent some­where and if your par­ents couldn’t af­ford it, you can’t come to St Au­gus­tine or get an ed­u­ca­tion. That is not fair. That can­not ever be fair to all the peo­ple of T&T.”

Biggest be­tray­al by of­fi­cials

She said when her last Gov­ern­ment left of­fice, the cam­pus was al­most com­plete.

“That cam­pus - we pledged to you - and we will make sure that cam­pus is opened. But it won’t hap­pen to­mor­row morn­ing. It will not hap­pen in Au­gust. I don’t know where and who came up with ‘it’s go­ing to hap­pen in Au­gust’ be­cause when the min­is­ters vis­it­ed the place, it’s a to­tal hor­ror sto­ry! The place is a dump!

“That place is about sev­en to 10 min­utes from my home, so I have to pass there every day and see that won­der­ful state-of-the-art cam­pus we left cov­ered in bush and rust! Isn’t that a shame - a be­tray­al!’

She con­tin­ued, “I think the biggest be­tray­al was the role of of­fi­cials at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in the 10 - year clo­sure of this cam­pus. Now, peo­ple run­ning out there and want to open cam­pus in Au­gust! Ten years shut down, not a word!

“That cam­pus was side­lined! Aban­doned! There’s no ef­fort se­ri­ous­ly by UWI ad­min­is­tra­tors to op­er­a­tionalise that cam­pus.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “That cam­pus will house what the Gov­ern­ment says it will house. The (UWI) ad­min­is­tra­tion will have no say in that. They can­not dic­tate to us what they want to put there … I don’t know where they come up with this thing ‘bout some ‘glob­al med­ical school.’ Don’t we have the Cou­va Med­ical Hos­pi­tal? We did the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal al­so. So, what you com­ing now with some ‘glob­al med­ical’ ... where you get that from? So, I think the biggest be­tray­al with this whole thing was by the ad­min­is­tra­tors, those in charge at UWI.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said what will be housed at the Debe cam­pus, “…will be our de­ci­sion to make. UWI had 10 years to step up. To­day, it’s time for them to step aside and let’s get on with the busi­ness of get­ting this cam­pus open ...”

“So those with the racist agen­das in their brain and in their minds they say ‘that cam­pus open­ing in Debe boy—no. Noth­ing for you.’ But that cam­pus was for the peo­ple from Point all around the penin­su­la com­ing right up … What kind of spite and mal­ice that you’d de­prive chil­dren of an op­por­tu­ni­ty?”

The PM said she wasn’t go­ing to al­low UWI “… to sab­o­tage our plans or take over our plans.”

“We’re very clear what we want to do. We were clear then and we’re clear­er now and now 10 years lat­er we can do so much more.”