SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

More than one year af­ter the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Debe cam­pus closed its doors as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty for COVID-19 pa­tients, the $500 mil­lion in­sti­tu­tion has re­mained va­cant as plans to con­vert it to a med­ical learn­ing fa­cil­i­ty have yet to ma­te­ri­alise

In March 2020, the Min­istry of Health de­cid­ed to in­clude the then-un­oc­cu­pied cam­pus as one of sev­er­al fa­cil­i­ties through­out the coun­try to man­age pa­tient care–part of the Gov­ern­ment’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

The cam­pus was used to quar­an­tine T&T na­tion­als who had re­turned home from abroad and need­ed spe­cialised care with the coro­n­avirus.

The cam­pus could have ac­com­mo­dat­ed 72 peo­ple in in­di­vid­ual rooms.

It was re­port­ed that in Jan­u­ary 2021, sev­en pa­tients who were re­ceiv­ing care at the cam­pus were trans­ferred to the Cou­va and Cau­ra Hos­pi­tals to fa­cil­i­tate the uni­ver­si­ty’s sched­uled main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties.

That was the on­ly time the cam­pus was put in­to use.

On Fri­day, the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Richards to as­cer­tain how many pa­tients had passed through the fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing the two years it was in use, but she re­ferred all ques­tions to the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

In April 2022, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh iden­ti­fied the cam­pus as be­ing un­oc­cu­pied as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty and gave the com­mit­ment to re­turn the in­sti­tu­tion to UWI for its orig­i­nal use.

In 2011, the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion award­ed Chi­na Jiang­su a $499 mil­lion con­tract for the con­struc­tion of the cam­pus which was in­tend­ed to house the Fac­ul­ty of Law, the UWI web­site stat­ed.

The project was fund­ed un­der the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP).

Con­struc­tion be­gan on the 100-acre cam­pus–lo­cat­ed near the Debe High School–in Jan­u­ary 2013 and was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by De­cem­ber 2014.

How­ev­er, the con­trac­tor was ter­mi­nat­ed in 2016 af­ter de­fault­ing on the work and UWI took full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for com­plet­ing the project.

A 2017 re­lease from UWI stat­ed the project had been in the pub­lic space for years and was three years over­due.

“Com­ple­tion of the phys­i­cal con­struc­tion has meant chang­ing con­trac­tors and now that con­struc­tion is once again on track, the com­mit­tee re­spon­si­ble for op­er­a­tional­is­ing has once again been re­con­sti­tut­ed,” the re­lease had stat­ed.

The project was di­vid­ed by UWI and of­fered to sev­er­al lo­cal con­trac­tors for com­ple­tion.

In a sur­prise move short­ly af­ter, UWI an­nounced that the Debe cam­pus will be utilised for its new flag­ship Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences and not the Fac­ul­ty of Law as ini­tial­ly planned.

This led to stu­dents from the Fac­ul­ty of Law protest­ing against the de­ci­sion.

The Fac­ul­ty of Law was lat­er giv­en a new home on the re­fur­bished top floor of the Comp­ton Bourne Build­ing at the main cam­pus in St Au­gus­tine.

In the months that fol­lowed, then UWI prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland promised that the uni­ver­si­ty’s south cam­pus would be opened for stu­dents in time for the 2019/2020 aca­d­e­m­ic year.

That plan nev­er ma­te­ri­alised, as UWI stat­ed they want­ed to en­sure that the pro­grammes of­fered at the Debe cam­pus were above the qual­i­ty of­fered at St Au­gus­tine.

In March 2020, the pan­dem­ic hit and UWI was faced with two years of manda­to­ry clo­sure which fur­ther de­layed the op­er­a­tions of the cam­pus.

Prof An­toine com­mit­ted to dis­cussing the mat­ter

On Thurs­day, the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Prof An­toine via What­sApp for more in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the med­ical school. An­toine said she was on leave to re­turn next week and com­mit­ted to dis­cussing the mat­ter fur­ther.

Cam­pus bonds

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, UWI urged lo­cal in­vestors to buy US$60 mil­lion in bonds to fi­nance an off­shore med­ical school at the Debe cam­pus which was agreed up­on by the uni­ver­si­ty’s coun­cil.

UWI en­vis­aged that with­in three to five years the school could gen­er­ate up­wards of 30 per cent of the cam­pus’ long-term cap­i­tal and rev­enue needs.

The move to op­er­ate the med­ical school was nec­es­sary, UWI stat­ed, giv­en the change in the eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

Three months ago, UWI prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, pro­vid­ing up­dates on the uni­ver­si­ty’s key projects and list­ed the med­ical school as one of them.

“Con­vert­ing rep­u­ta­tion to rev­enue will fo­cus on boost­ing in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent re­cruit­ment with a glob­al med­ical school,” she had said.