For the 2020/21 aca­d­e­m­ic year the 30,000 stu­dents fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme will not be af­fect­ed by the re­cent­ly an­nounced changes in the GATE pol­i­cy.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to a ques­tion from In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Paul Richards.

Richards asked about the ex­pect­ed num­ber of ter­tiary lev­el stu­dents who will be af­fect­ed by cuts to the GATE pro­gramme an­nounced by Gov­ern­ment last week.

Gov­ern­ment is cut­ting GATE fund­ing to post­grad­u­ate stu­dents from 2021 and re­duc­ing schol­ar­ships from 400 to 100.

Re­ply­ing to Richards’ query, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, that for the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2020-21 none of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 GATE-fund­ed stu­dents will be af­fect­ed by the changes.

She said the ap­prox­i­mate 800 post­grad­u­ate stu­dents cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing GATE will con­tin­ue to do so un­til the end of the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2020/21.

“New stu­dents will not be el­i­gi­ble (for GATE), “ she added

“The ap­prox­i­mate­ly 900 stu­dents in Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos in­clud­ing the 2020 in­take will be fund­ed at the present lev­el of GATE for the nor­mal du­ra­tion of their pro­gramme.”

She added, “Fu­ture stu­dents ap­ply­ing for GATE at those in­sti­tu­tions will re­ceive fund­ing at the cost lev­el of these cours­es at St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said it was es­ti­mat­ed that the quan­tum of the ex­pen­di­ture ex­pect­ed to be re­duced by the non-fund­ing of the stu­dents was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30m.

On oth­er queries from UNC sen­a­tor David Nakhid, Min­is­ter Gads­by –Dol­ly re­it­er­at­ed that the de­ci­sion on clos­ing some UTT cam­pus­es in­volv­ing keep­ing costs at a min­i­mum. She re­peat­ed the sev­en oth­er cam­pus­es to which stu­dents would be fil­tered.

Nakhid asked if UTT staff and stu­dents were con­sult­ed on the de­ci­sion. Gads­by-Dol­ly said it was a de­ci­sion of UTT’s board which was cog­nisant of fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and the de­ci­sion was tak­en on the ba­sis of fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances.

She al­so said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry would be re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­ter­ing the bur­saries for stu­dents in the re­duced schol­ar­ship sys­tem.

Frankie stumped

by Anil doc­u­ment

On an­oth­er is­sue, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan was un­able to an­swer a cer­tain ques­tion from UNC sen­a­tor Anil Roberts on a mat­ter con­cern­ing the pay­ment which Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny re­ceived for the oil ship­ment it sold in April.

Re­ply­ing to a se­ries of queries from Roberts, Khan had ear­li­er said that in March to April Paria bought 1.24 mil­lion bar­rels of oil from Trafigu­ra PTE Ltd. He said the trans­ac­tions were con­duct­ed from Paria’s day to day op­er­at­ing banks ac­counts.

Khan said Paria sup­plies the lo­cal mar­ket and Cari­com mar­kets.

Khan al­so said pay­ment for 148, 968 bar­rels of gaso­line—sold by Paria—which was re­ceived from ES Eu­ro SA was trans­ferred from the Deutsche Bank to Paria’s ac­count at the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da.

But he said for com­mer­cial rea­sons the pay­ments for the bar­rels of oil can­not be dis­closed.

Roberts not­ed a Paria ad­ver­tise­ment and the min­istry had stat­ed the pay­ment went to Paria’s RBC ac­count.

But Roberts said he had an En­er­gy Min­istry doc­u­ment laid in Par­lia­ment which showed that the April 27 in­voice for the pay­ment showed it was to be made to Paria’s First Cit­i­zens ac­count in­stead.

“ How is it pos­si­ble it went to RBC in­stead when the in­voice stat­ed it be made to a First Cit­i­zen’s bank ac­count?!” Roberts asked.

Khan said, “Well, I’m not seized of that in­for­ma­tion. If he has that in­for­ma­tion and it’s on the Hansard (Par­lia­men­tary record) I’ll check to ver­i­fy the ve­rac­i­ty and what are the rea­sons be­hind it.”