Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Se­nior Re­porter

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

Lec­tur­ers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus will not be sub­mit­ting ex­am pa­pers for the forth­com­ing end of se­mes­ter ex­er­cis­es to­day, as they up their protest ac­tion over stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

This was con­firmed by West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, who said they will in­stead en­gage in protest ac­tion on the cam­pus to high­light their sit­u­a­tion.

Ex­ams are set for De­cem­ber and Ram­per­sad said while the pa­pers were ready, they will not be re­leased by them un­less they get an of­fer.

“We ad­vised our mem­bers to have them pre­pared and once we get some­thing that is sat­is­fac­to­ry, we are ready to re­lease. But they have to come with some­thing rea­son­able,” she said.

Ram­per­sad said the ac­tion was ini­ti­at­ed be­cause they had still not re­ceived an im­proved re­mit af­ter re­ject­ing the ini­tial two per cent of­fer. The union is ne­go­ti­at­ing for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2017 and the two per cent of­fer was placed on the ta­ble in April, af­ter they al­so threat­ened to dis­rupt ex­ams. The of­fer was im­me­di­ate­ly re­ject­ed by the union, slam­ming it as “in­de­cent” and “in­sult­ing” to some of the coun­try’s most qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als. The union has since been call­ing for a bet­ter of­fer.

Asked about the re­sponse to WIGUT’s counter-of­fer, Ram­per­sad said, “The cam­pus prin­ci­pal ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt and said she sent it up to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and so we do not know from there where it is go­ing to go be­cause I do not know if the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has to li­aise with the Min­istry of Fi­nance be­cause I do not know if that dis­burse­ment—I am talk­ing about salary in­creas­es and back­pay and what not—were in­clud­ed in the 2024 bud­get. We do not know what is hap­pen­ing.”

Ram­per­sad said start­ing to­day, WIGUT in­tends to in­ten­si­fy its protest ac­tion across the cam­pus. Al­ready, it has be­gun shut­ting down ac­tiv­i­ties at all the li­braries, Hu­man Re­source Di­vi­sion, Reg­istry, Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Book­store, Stu­dent Ser­vices and the of­fices of Prin­ci­pal and Deputy Prin­ci­pal.

Mem­bers have al­so not been at­tend­ing unit and com­mit­tee meet­ings. Course­work grades to stu­dents are not be­ing sub­mit­ted, class record­ings, slides and teach­ing aides are al­so not be­ing up­loaded to the stu­dent site, mye­Learn­ing, while there are no of­fice hours dur­ing which stu­dents can typ­i­cal­ly get ad­vice.

Dr Ram­per­sad said once the weath­er holds up to­day, WIGUT mem­bers will protest, be­gin­ning at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre and end­ing at the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said her min­istry is not in­volved in the ne­go­ti­a­tion, as the Min­istry of Fi­nance is tak­ing the lead. She added that any sit­u­a­tion which af­fects the stu­dents will be brought to her at­ten­tion by prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine and mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures will be dis­cussed.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sought re­spons­es from Prof An­toine and the UWI St Au­gus­tine Guild of Stu­dents. How­ev­er, there were no re­spons­es up to press time.

Dur­ing a WIGUT protest last month, Prof An­toine em­pathised with her staff but not­ed the UWI has been fac­ing dark days due to fi­nan­cial con­straints.