Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar toured the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies South (Debe) Cam­pus yes­ter­day as re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works com­menced, reaf­firm­ing her Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to open­ing the fa­cil­i­ty for stu­dents across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the tour, the Prime Min­is­ter re­ceived up­dates from project teams on the on­go­ing restora­tion works and the struc­tured plan to bring the cam­pus in­to op­er­a­tion.

She said the Debe Cam­pus rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal in­vest­ment in ex­pand­ing ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for stu­dents in South Trinidad, and en­sures that op­por­tu­ni­ty is not lim­it­ed by ge­og­ra­phy or fi­nan­cial con­straints.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that de­ci­sive ac­tion has al­ready been tak­en, in­clud­ing Cab­i­net ap­provals and the ini­ti­a­tion of key ten­ders to ad­vance re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works un­der a co­or­di­nat­ed de­liv­ery frame­work.

She added that the re­open­ing of the cam­pus will not on­ly ben­e­fit stu­dents but al­so stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and job cre­ation in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing the cam­pus as a mod­ern cen­tre of learn­ing and op­por­tu­ni­ty, aligned with na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment needs.

“This cam­pus was al­ways meant to serve the peo­ple, and we are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing it opens its doors to stu­dents,” she said.

At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing last month, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment will as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all re­pair works at the cam­pus.

He said Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (PSAEL) will car­ry out the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works, with the aim of start­ing class­es at the South Cam­pus at the be­gin­ning of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year in Sep­tem­ber 2026.

Ho­sein al­so said no de­ci­sions have been made re­gard­ing which fac­ul­ties will oc­cu­py the site.

The de­vel­op­ment comes against the back­drop of ear­li­er con­cerns raised by the uni­ver­si­ty over in­fra­struc­ture chal­lenges at the site.

In March, UWI prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine said long-stand­ing plumb­ing fail­ures at the Debe cam­pus were ex­pect­ed to be per­ma­nent­ly fixed, with ini­tial es­ti­mates plac­ing the cost at about $4 mil­lion.

She said the de­fec­tive plumb­ing sys­tem, linked to shift­ing land, had been a per­sis­tent struc­tur­al is­sue since the cam­pus was built. While tem­po­rary re­pairs were car­ried out over the years, in­clud­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od when the fa­cil­i­ty was re­pur­posed, she said new gov­ern­ment-fund­ed works were ex­pect­ed to re­solve the prob­lem.