Af­ter a two year de­lay, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies South Cam­pus is fi­nal­ly ready to be opened for the Sep­tem­ber 2020 aca­d­e­m­ic term.

Prin­ci­pal Bri­an Copeland made this rev­e­la­tion in a let­ter sent to Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal on Wednes­day.

Mooni­lal had writ­ten to Copeland since Sep­tem­ber last year re­quest­ing de­tails on when the cam­pus will be open­ing.

In re­sponse, Copeland said the UWI is well-po­si­tioned to be­gin op­er­a­tions from Sep­tem­ber 2020.

“There will be an ini­tial mix of pro­gramme of­fer­ings from the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Food and Agri­cul­ture and Med­ical Sci­ences. The UWI Roytech will al­so be op­er­at­ing its south-based pro­grammes from the UWISC be­gin­ning in Sep­tem­ber 2020,” Copeland added.

He ex­plained that the team re­spon­si­ble for op­er­a­tions art the UWIS­CC has been work­ing close­ly with the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber to en­gage with key stake­hold­ers in the area and iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties for pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships.

“In fact, this year we pre­sent­ed the PDRC with a draft MOU which we hope can be signed in short or­der. The MOU will re­flect dis­cus­sions held with the chair­man, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and oth­er mem­bers of the PDRC on ar­eas of col­lab­o­ra­tion in­clud­ing ar­eas of tech­ni­cal/func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing,” Copeland added.

He said a sim­i­lar MOU will be pre­sent­ed to the Cham­ber for its con­sid­er­a­tion and “that MOU will al­so re­flect the spir­it and scope of on­go­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween the UWISC and the Cham­ber Pres­i­dent.”

“It is my hope that you would ac­cept our in­vi­ta­tion to tour the UWISC at a mu­tu­al­ly con­ve­nient date in the near fu­ture,” Copeland said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Mooni­lal said he was look­ing for­ward to the cam­pus open­ing.

“I have re­ceived the let­ter dat­ed Feb 26 but re­main cau­tious since the UWI has promised to open this fa­cil­i­ty since Sep­tem­ber 2018. The aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes keep chang­ing and now there is a planned re­lo­ca­tion of Roytec pro­grammes for the UWI. I will be­lieve it when I see it—a grad­u­at­ing class could have left that cam­pus by now had they com­plet­ed the fa­cil­i­ty in 2017 as pro­posed,” Mooni­lal said.

Chair­man of the Cor­po­ra­tion Dr Allen Sam­my, al­so weighed in.

He said sev­er­al promis­es were made in the past about the cam­pus open­ing and none had ma­te­ri­al­ized.

“I am not hold­ing my breath. When it’s done, I will be­lieve it,” Sam­my de­clared.

He said the cam­pus had the po­ten­tial to re­vi­tal­ize eco­nom­ic and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties in the south­ern re­gion.