PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Grades for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to be up­loaded by to­mor­row af­ter WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad con­firmed a six per cent wage set­tle­ment with the Gov­ern­ment cov­er­ing two ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Dr Ram­per­sad stat­ed that WIGUT ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s 0-0-3, 0-0-3 wage pro­pos­al—to­talling a six per cent in­crease—amid on­go­ing na­tion­al un­cer­tain­ties. The union set­tled for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2020.

“They (WIGUT mem­bers) didn’t think it was ad­e­quate; they didn’t think it is in any way com­pa­ra­ble to the SRC re­ports, 47 per cent for the prime min­is­ter, and those high in­creas­es for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Or even com­pa­ra­ble with the Cave Hill cam­pus or with UTT and Lok Jack na­tion­al­ly. They will al­so look at the very, very un­cer­tain po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic cli­mate, with elec­tion loom­ing while we’re in a state of emer­gency, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the in­ter­im prime min­is­ter pend­ing, and the crime sit­u­a­tion. So with all of these un­cer­tain­ties, and in gen­er­al, they thought that they would con­sid­er this,” said Ram­per­sad.

She said the union al­so con­sid­ered the Gov­ern­ment’s sug­ges­tion that an im­proved wage set­tle­ment would be of­fered for the 2024 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

She said the lec­tur­ers nev­er in­tend­ed to de­rail the progress of stu­dents.

“Every­body’s con­cerned about the dis­rup­tions, and we got in­clud­ed. We nev­er want­ed to tar­get our stu­dents. Our ac­tions nev­er tar­get­ed our stu­dents. The stu­dents’ guild is ac­tu­al­ly in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our cause, not our ac­tion, which is okay,” she said.

“The prin­ci­pal is still con­cerned about the brain drain, okay, the hu­man cap­i­tal flight. We are al­so con­cerned whether she can still at­tract staff, and this in­crease will not do so. It will not do so be­cause peo­ple are leav­ing in droves. She’s very wor­ried or very con­cerned about the fu­ture of the uni­ver­si­ty and our ca­pac­i­ty to sus­tain it with­out the qual­i­ty staff that we need, giv­en these pal­try salaries; the salaries are still pal­try.”

Dr Ram­per­sad, how­ev­er, felt the set­tle­ment would do lit­tle to ad­dress oth­er ma­jor press­ing con­cerns faced by the uni­ver­si­ty.

“We are not cel­e­brat­ing. We are not joy­ous. We are not, you know, hap­py. We are re­lieved. Cer­tain­ly, you know, the ex­ec­u­tive is re­lieved be­cause this is ex­treme­ly hard work,” Dr Ram­per­sad added.

BOX

Prin­ci­pal re­lieved in­dus­tri­al peace re­stored

UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Rose-Marie Belle An­toine said she was re­lieved to have in­dus­tri­al peace re­stored but agreed the loss of aca­d­e­m­ic staff re­mained a con­cern.

“I think a good first step has been made. We will be work­ing to­ward a job eval­u­a­tion be­cause the larg­er is­sues re­main–our salaries are not com­pet­i­tive–al­though we are the No 1 uni­ver­si­ty in the Caribbean and the top three per cent in the world, we are way be­hind in­sti­tu­tions here in T&T and the re­gion in terms of re­mu­ner­a­tion.

“The prac­ti­cal con­se­quence of that is that we are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty at­tract­ing and even re­tain­ing staff. I had six (6) aca­d­e­mics re­sign two weeks ago! S o I re­main wor­ried about the im­pli­ca­tions for the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the UWI. How­ev­er, I thank the Gov’t for this first pos­i­tive step,” said Prof Belle An­toine.