Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer UWI Coun­cil mem­ber and for­mer head of Eng­lish and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at UWI School of Busi­ness Lim­it­ed, Dr Al­lan Mc Ken­zie, has ex­pressed sup­port for es­tab­lish­ing A Glob­al Spe­cial­ist School of Med­i­cine at the UWI Debe cam­pus.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia, Mc Ken­zie, now 92, said the law fac­ul­ty was not the best op­tion for Debe.

“Tom, Dick, and Har­ry goes to study law ex­ter­nal­ly from Lon­don,” he not­ed, sug­gest­ing law stud­ies are wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble and should not be the cam­pus’ main fo­cus.

Mc Ken­zie said the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine could at­tract re­gion­al doc­tors and of­fer con­tin­u­ous train­ing.

“It will be a very ben­e­fi­cial thing for the coun­try,” he said.

He said there is a sur­plus of lawyers and a short­age of med­ical spe­cial­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“A lot of our doc­tors need train­ing and re­train­ing from time to time,” he added.

“That train­ing and re­train­ing can take place there at the UWI Debe Cam­pus so that any doc­tor in any part of the coun­try or even the Caribbean can come there.”

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took the UWI to task for fail­ing to open the cam­pus nine years af­ter she left of­fice. She al­so said the cam­pus will not open in Au­gust, say­ing she did not know who gave UWI the clear­ance to open a glob­al med­ical school. She said the cam­pus was de­signed and con­struct­ed to fa­cil­i­tate law.

Prin­ci­pal of the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Prof Rose-Marie An­toine, has de­ferred ques­tions re­gard­ing the Debe cam­pus project to Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les.

Guardian Me­dia posed sev­er­al ques­tions to Prof An­toine, in­clud­ing what de­fects were iden­ti­fied at the time of the con­tract’s ter­mi­na­tion; what hap­pened to the de­fect li­a­bil­i­ty; which FIDIC con­tract was used; and on what grounds UWI ter­mi­nat­ed the agree­ment in 2016. A FIDIC con­tract refers to a stan­dard type of con­tract pub­lished by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Con­sult­ing En­gi­neers. These con­tracts are wide­ly used in in­ter­na­tion­al con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing projects, in­clud­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Guardian Me­dia al­so raised ques­tions about whether a ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port had been con­duct­ed be­fore con­struc­tion, giv­en for­mer prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland’s com­ments that con­struc­tion was ham­pered by un­suit­able soil.

Guardian Me­dia al­so en­quired about the uni­ver­si­ty’s ef­forts to re­cov­er funds and whether the con­trac­tor had been tak­en to court.

UWI had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that the ques­tions were be­ing di­rect­ed to var­i­ous in­ter­nal stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, in a What­sApp mes­sage on Tues­day night, Prof An­toine said, “The VC will re­spond on The UWI’s be­half. Thank you.”

Emails seek­ing com­ment were sent to sev­er­al UWI of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Beck­les, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Justin Robin­son, Uni­ver­si­ty Reg­is­trar Mau­rice Smith, and Sec­re­tari­at to the Chan­cel­lor’s Com­mis­sion Deb­o­rah Souza-Okpo­fab­ri. To date, no re­spons­es have been re­ceived.

The Debe cam­pus was con­struct­ed by Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Tech­ni­cal Co-op­er­a­tion Cor­po­ra­tion (CJI­ETCC) un­der a $499 mil­lion de­sign-build con­tract award­ed in 2012, with Acuitas Caribbean Lim­it­ed man­ag­ing the project.