RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Debe cam­pus as a “dump,” UWI Prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie An­toine de­nied the cam­pus is in ru­ins and said she was look­ing for­ward to talks with the Gov­ern­ment on the mat­ter.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to ques­tions on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­tack on the UWI man­age­ment over the state of the cam­pus and what it is to be used for, An­toine ad­mit­ted that she had been in a lec­ture for mush of the day and hadn’t heard what the PM said on the cam­pus.

How­ev­er, she not­ed, “I was pleased to re­ceive a let­ter from the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion this morn­ing invit­ing us to a meet­ing to dis­cuss the South Cam­pus com­ple­tion and pro­grammes for there, in­clud­ing the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine. We are pleased that the Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to in­vest in it.”

Hours be­fore in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, An­toine de­nied al­le­ga­tions made by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that the cam­pus was in a state of di­lap­i­da­tion.

In re­sponse to the claim that the cam­pus is “in ru­ins,” An­toine said, “‘Ru­in’ is not fac­tu­al lan­guage. It’s emo­tive and sub­jec­tive. In this age of dig­i­tal me­dia, such com­ments can reach far and wide and neg­a­tive­ly af­fect UWI’s brand and rep­u­ta­tion, es­pe­cial­ly at a time when we are try­ing to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents, earn for­eign ex­change, and sup­port na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. I be­lieve we all share those goals.”

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, though, Mooni­lal clar­i­fied that 25 per cent of the cam­pus was in use by Roytec but dou­bled down on his claim that the rest of the fa­cil­i­ty was in a hor­ri­ble state.

Mul­ti­ple sources told Guardian Me­dia the cam­pus had a de­fec­tive sew­er sys­tem, main build­ings cov­ered in black mould, van­dalised halls of res­i­dence, and mul­ti­ple wa­ter leaks that have caused land slip­pages across the 100-acre site off the M2 Ring Road in Debe.

When the Guardian vis­it­ed the cam­pus, rum­bles were heard com­ing from the sew­er plant.

On Tues­day, the me­dia was blocked from join­ing Mooni­lal on a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty. How­ev­er, Prof An­toine con­firmed that a tour is be­ing arranged for the me­dia next week.

Pho­tos of up­grad­ed sec­tions of the cam­pus were shared with the me­dia by UWI yes­ter­day.

Re­gard­ing claims that di­lap­i­dat­ed ar­eas were cor­doned off, Pro­fes­sor An­toine clar­i­fied: “No ar­eas have been sec­tioned off, ex­cept for a li­brary that was nev­er con­struct­ed.”

Pro­fes­sor An­toine al­so clar­i­fied that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­quest­ed a pri­vate tour of the cam­pus and UWI grant­ed that re­quest.

Re­gard­ing the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine, she said: “The Glob­al Med­ical School is nei­ther new nor new­ly an­nounced. That de­ci­sion was made and an­nounced in 2019. The me­dia has cov­ered this strate­gic ob­jec­tive many times, most re­cent­ly in March dur­ing the An­nu­al Coun­cil when both my­self and Vice-Chan­cel­lor (Hi­lary) Beck­les spoke ex­ten­sive­ly about the progress.”

She al­so said the cam­pus be­longs to UWI.

“We’ve done sig­nif­i­cant re­pairs over the last year and a half. In fact, we’ve been work­ing sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly on it, as we’ve re­port­ed at coun­cil meet­ings. Most of the main build­ings are ready for oc­cu­pa­tion. ROYTEC is al­ready mov­ing in. As Min­is­ter Mooni­lal said, the Moot Court is beau­ti­ful—com­pa­ra­ble to the ICJ. It’s a huge cam­pus, and we couldn’t re­fur­bish every­thing at once due to lack of funds. Now that we have a gov­ern­ment that’s in­ter­est­ed in the cam­pus—which was gift­ed to us—we are op­ti­mistic that much more can be done.”

An­toine al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about vis­i­ble rust.

“The rust­ing is not struc­tur­al—it’s part of the dec­o­ra­tive fa­cade. We will re­pair it us­ing our in­no­v­a­tive Sealit ma­rine sealant, which is suit­able for this cli­mate. It’s a beau­ti­ful cam­pus.”

But a struc­tur­al en­gi­neer who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said the sealant is not suit­able for the rust and cor­ro­sion ex­ist­ing in the cam­pus build­ings, not­ing it is made for roof re­pairs.