PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

A call has been made for the Stu­dent Guild pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Kir­by Moses, to step down. This fol­lows a vote of no con­fi­dence held by sev­er­al mem­bers of the guild ear­li­er this week, who raised con­cerns about Moses’ broth­er be­ing ap­point­ed as Guild trea­sur­er de­spite calls for a by-elec­tion to be held for the po­si­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Guild mem­bers raised con­cerns about Moses’ al­le­ga­tions against the coun­cil and ad­min­is­tra­tion re­gard­ing fi­nan­cial dis­crep­an­cies in the guild’s ac­counts. They said there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port the claims.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Moses ques­tioned the va­lid­i­ty of the mo­tion against her and be­lieved it was in­deed re­lat­ed to her ask­ing ques­tions about the guild’s ac­counts.

She said she would take note of the crit­i­cisms raised, but still called for an au­dit to be done with re­gard to the guild’s ac­counts.

“I con­tin­ue to work to­wards those goals with the peo­ple who are work­ing with me to get there. I do not de­ny that what was pre­sent­ed can in­deed build no con­fi­dence in some­one, but I un­der­stand that my voice was not in the room, so that’s okay. I take it in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, and I hear them, and I hear their re­quest, and I move for­ward,” she told Guardian Me­dia in a phone in­ter­view.

“As it re­lates to the state of the guild, we are in des­per­ate need of au­dit­ing in that place: au­dit of the guild ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice, au­dit of the Guild of Stu­dents, au­dit of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, es­pe­cial­ly those who deal with the port­fo­lio of the Guild of Stu­dents.”

Moses said she planned to make an of­fi­cial re­port with ev­i­dence to UWI St Au­gus­tine Prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine soon.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Prof Belle An­toine said she had heard of the vote but said the ad­min­is­tra­tion “could not and should not” get in­volved.

She con­firmed that she was un­aware of the con­cerns about the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s han­dling of the guild’s fi­nan­cial ac­counts and de­nied funds had been mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed.