After facing ten years of wasted taxpayers’ money, frustration and “bad mind” politics regarding the “dilapidated” UWI Debe campus, PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar, SC, felt upset enough to challenge The UWI management. In another of her “cleaning up” post-cabinet press conferences last week, she testily declared: “Do not test me! If I have to do it, I will take that campus back and put it under government control to make sure we complete it and get the job done.”
She described the Debe campus as a “total horror story, a dump,” and the PNM government’s failure to open it as a “betrayal.”
During their 2010-2015 term, the UNC government built the 100-acre south campus at a cost of “$500 million.” Remember, then PM, Persad-Bissessar formally cut the ribbon in 2015. This campus was one of UNC’s two precious flagship jewels. The other was the Couva Multi-Purpose Children’s Hospital and Training Centre.
Citing academic, economic, social and public safety reasons for the Debe campus, Persad-Bissessar said: “One of the goals of that campus was to ease the burden of parents who are forced to pay high rentals for rent, food for their children to come to St Augustine to spend years…and if your parents can’t afford it, you can’t come to St Augustine and get an education.”
This, therefore, is a serious matter of social justice, offending the spirit of the constitution and raising the question: “Why then the previous government did not push for proper completion of the campus?” Considering all circumstances, it looks like “bad mind,” spiting the government that built it, even if it meant denying the rights of a large section of the national community. Similarly with the $1.5 billion Couva hospital.
The established purpose of this hospital was to train and heal the sick, from children in a situation where the health needs of the nation were not properly served. Again, for obvious political reasons, the equipped Couva hospital became a political playground for the minister, even with its use during the covid19 pandemic.
Why didn’t the PNM government not put the hospital into full use? Unless convincing explanations are offered, it seems that the PNM government preferred to deny citizens education and health for political reasons, or is it about where these two institutions are located?
Now, lest we forget, the previous PM and ministers of education and health took this sworn oath: “I, A.B., do swear by…that I will bear true faith and allegiance to Trinidad and Tobago and will uphold the Constitution and the law, that I will conscientiously, impartially and to the best of my ability discharge my duties and do right to all manner of people without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.” Think about it.
On my way to Moruga early this year, I saw the dilapidated, weed-infested condition of this tax-paid southern campus. As a citizen, educator and a UWI professor emeritus, I was appalled. On his visit last week, Energy Minister and Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal not only complained about the conditions of the campus b
