The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) is mov­ing to shut down four of its 11 cam­pus­es be­fore year’s end.

The cam­pus­es to be closed down are the ones in Val­sayn, Ch­agua­nas, Ari­ma and Corinth.

Con­fir­ma­tion came from UTT chair­man Prof Clement Im­bert dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia about the op­er­a­tions of the be­lea­guered uni­ver­si­ty which has been strug­gling to keep afloat due to fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties.

UTT is cur­rent­ly fac­ing a cash deficit of $57 mil­lion for the fis­cal year 2021.

In the 16 years UTT has opened its door, Im­bert said the uni­ver­si­ty suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged 13 cam­pus­es.

“We have 11 cam­pus­es right now in­clud­ing Tamana. So we have four cam­pus­es we think we can read­i­ly give up. We don’t need to have all of them par­tic­u­lar­ly as the Tamana cam­pus which has been build­ing, oh lord, for over 16 years.”

He said the uni­ver­si­ty can ac­com­mo­date 1,500 stu­dents at its in­com­plete flag­ship build­ing- the Tamana cam­pus, but could not say when they will en­rol since they were seek­ing ap­proval from the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of T&T to teach.

Ques­tioned if the con­sol­i­da­tion will lead to job loss­es and re­lo­ca­tion.

“Cer­tain­ly we will re­lo­cate staff,” Im­bert replied.

He said merg­ing cam­pus­es will save on jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices, se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance fees.

It was no se­cret, Im­bert said that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had been eye­ing the Val­sayn cam­pus months ago.

“I don’t know for a high school or what­ev­er. And we said that was fine. So Val­sayn was es­sen­tial­ly gone.”

Im­bert said as soon as UTT staff shift­ed from the Val­sayn cam­pus, the Health Min­istry had to utilise the build­ing as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty to treat pos­i­tive COVID-19 pa­tients.

Im­bert said UTT will al­so give up the Corinth cam­pus.

While Im­bert was un­able to say how many stu­dents will be af­fect­ed with the clo­sure of Corinth, he said they will be re­lo­cat­ed to UTT’s Point Lisas and San Fer­nan­do cam­pus­es.

Though Val­sayn and Corinth be­long to the State, Im­bert said the uni­ver­si­ty re­fur­bished these build­ings and paid its own util­i­ties.

The oth­er two cam­pus­es UTT will shut down will be- Ago­ra in Ch­agua­nas and Omeara in Ari­ma which the uni­ver­si­ty owns.

“We are leav­ing Omeara...we have al­most left. What is a good thing, is that oth­er peo­ple are look­ing to use it....oth­er in­sti­tu­tions in the Gov­ern­ment are look­ing to use it be­cause we can­not aban­don a place and leave it. Peo­ple will to­tal­ly van­dalise it.”

Im­bert said a few peo­ple have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in util­is­ing Omeara but re­fused to say who.

Staff at Omeara will be housed at the Tamana cam­pus.

Asked if UTT had giv­en up Omeara’s 30-year lease from Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd which would have ex­pired in 2035 and en­tered in­to a 99-year lease arrange­ment at a cost of $23.7 mil­lion which was a rec­om­men­da­tion put for­ward by then UTT’s pres­i­dent Prof Dy­er Nar­i­nesingh on De­cem­ber 9, 2015,

Im­bert said he was not sure if they had pur­sued that.

“And it does not mat­ter be­cause we are leav­ing Omeara in any case. Yes, the land is leased from eTeck. But the build­ings in­clud­ing the grad­u­a­tion pavil­ion that be­longs to UTT.”

Ques­tioned if the af­fect­ed staff mem­bers will be ab­sorbed in the oth­er cam­pus­es, Im­bert replied: “ As far as we could. Re­mem­ber, right now we don’t know what go­ing on with the mon­ey squeeze, you know that. So we don’t know.”

As he prays for fi­nan­cial re­lief from the Gov­ern­ment, Im­bert said it is al­ways painful and stress­ful to tell staff their jobs are on the line.

In 2018, UTT ter­mi­nat­ed 67 pro­fes­sors while 199 non-aca­d­e­m­ic staff were sent home in 2019.

He said it was un­for­tu­nate he has been put in this po­si­tion, stat­ing one has to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the fi­nan­cial strain the Gov­ern­ment has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Be­fore year’s end, Im­bert said Corinth, Omeara and Val­sayn cam­pus­es will be gone.

Ago­ra will be kept for a lit­tle longer.

But will UTT rent Omeara and Ago­ra?

“Ago­ra be­longs to­tal­ly to us ...land, build­ing every­thing. We are a com­pa­ny with one share­hold­er, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. You can­not as a board do what you want with as­sets un­less the share­hold­er agree.”

Im­bert said they can sell Ago­ra which is val­ued be­tween $25 to $30 mil­lion.

“A lot of peo­ple are eye­ing it, you know. A beau­ti­ful build­ing... prime lo­ca­tion for any com­pa­ny that wants to put its head of­fice there or some­thing. If we get ap­proval we will ad­ver­tise it for rent. I am hop­ing that those we have can gen­er­ate in­come.”

He said the ques­tion of rent­ing or al­low­ing an­oth­er state en­ter­prise to utilise the build­ings falls in the Gov­ern­ment’s hands.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in a What­sapp mes­sage con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that UTT will be con­sol­i­dat­ing cam­pus­es to cut costs.

“The min­istry is present­ly dis­cussing what can be done to as­sist the uni­ver­si­ty re­gard­ing cash flow is­sues. The uni­ver­si­ty will be con­sol­i­dat­ing cam­pus­es and striv­ing to make its op­er­a­tions even lean­er to re­duce op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­ture.”