Staff at the UWI Glob­al Cam­pus are set to sus­pend du­ties over the late pay­ment of salaries.

This af­ter the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) in­struct­ed its open cam­pus mem­bers to with­hold their ser­vices via an in­ter­nal com­mu­niqué on No­vem­ber 20, 2023. It fol­lowed a no­tice on Wednes­day from the open cam­pus prin­ci­pal, Dr Fran­cis Sev­erin, con­firm­ing the de­lay in salary pay­ments.

Dr Sev­erin ad­vised staff that his team has not been able to ac­cess funds, which it would have earned over the aca­d­e­m­ic year and hoped to use to pay work­ers.

“The present pe­ri­od has turned out to be one of the most dif­fi­cult and tough ones for our faith­ful staff of The UWI Glob­al Cam­pus in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the Se­nior Man­age­ment Team re­grets this very much. We per­sist in try­ing our very best to re­solve the Oc­to­ber 2023 pay­roll (de­layed now by over a month) even as we con­tem­plate the No­vem­ber 2023 salaries, which are due on No­vem­ber 23rd. This is the fac­tu­al and ex­is­ten­tial re­al­i­ty that is be­fore us and which we must deal with,” Dr Sev­erin’s email to staff in­di­cat­ed.

He as­sured that his team, along with the uni­ver­si­ty bur­sar, was work­ing to re­solve the mat­ter as soon as pos­si­ble.

How­ev­er, WIGUT pres­i­dent, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, told Guardian Me­dia the de­lay in salary pay­ments has been oc­cur­ring for some time. She be­lieves there are two fac­tors con­tribut­ing to this prob­lem - a 40% cut in gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions and late pay­ment of fees by stu­dents.

“The Glob­al Cam­pus has stu­dents from all over the Caribbean, and some of these stu­dents are very poor and can­not af­ford to pay but still reg­is­ter, which the cam­pus tries to ac­com­mo­date. The ma­jor is­sue, though, is the cut in sub­ven­tion,” Dr Ram­per­sad said.

“The man­age­ment has a pro­pos­al on the way for­ward to deal with this, and it has to do with the ex­pan­sion of the cur­ricu­lum and mar­ket­ing of the mas­ter’s pro­grammes, but that is go­ing to take a while,” she added.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly yes­ter­day agreed that the late pay­ment of salaries has been oc­cur­ring for sev­er­al years.

“The Open (Cam­pus) has had some rec­om­men­da­tions to deal with their fi­nan­cial is­sues, and they will have to car­ry out the im­ple­men­ta­tion now be­cause they have been in this po­si­tion for quite some time,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

There are 13 glob­al cam­pus­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go and a stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 5,000. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that staff at the Ja­maica Mona Cam­pus are al­so af­fect­ed.

Ad­min­is­tra­tive, Learn­ing Sup­port and Sys­tem staff are be­ing told by WIGUT not to pro­vide sup­port, while oth­ers are be­ing told not to at­tend any meet­ings. This ac­tion will con­tin­ue un­til all out­stand­ing salaries have been paid.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Glob­al Cam­pus Guild of Stu­dents pres­i­dent Ol­son Brown, could not con­firm whether stu­dents had not been pay­ing their tu­ition fees. He ad­mit­ted there were com­plaints by stu­dents when fees in­creased ear­li­er this year. How­ev­er, he said stu­dents no longer com­plain. He added that de­spite the is­sues sur­round­ing salary pay­ments, stu­dents have not been af­fect­ed by any staff ac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Dr Sev­erin about the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges at the cam­pus but there were no re­spons­es up to press time.