THE UWI, St Augustine, Guild of Students says it will wait until it has all the information on issues surrounding the Penal/Debe campus before making a public statement.
This follows a week of back-and-forth between the government and UWI’s administration on the facility.
The project began around 2012 under the People’s Partnership coalition government.
But work was temporarily halted after 2015. UWI said construction was only completed in 2019.
It remains unopened but the university recently said classes will begin there in August.
However, government officials recently toured the building, describing its state as “horrific” and likening it to a dump. They also slammed UWI for not opening it over the last ten years.
Additionally, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar criticised UWI’s administration and threatened to take the campus out of its control if it does not comply with the government’s plans for the facility.
Her government wanted it to primarily be used as a faculty of law, while offering other programmes. UWI recently said it would be used as a global school of medicine.
“Do not test me,” Persad-Bissessar warned. She also said the campus will not open in August.
“That campus will house what the government says it will house. The administration will have no say in that. They cannot dictate to us what they want to put there.”
In 2017, law students at the St Augustine campus protested the move to Debe.
Asked about all of this, outgoing guild president Josef Paty told Newsday via WhatsApp, “We don’t have all the information surrounding it and I won’t like to speak on something I’m not 100 per cent sure about.”
He said the guild “prefers to have all the details.”
Guild president-elect Vedanand Hargobin will take over on June 1.
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