Hosein: No decision yet on faculties for Debe campus

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

The gov­ern­ment is tak­ing steps to bring the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Debe cam­pus up to op­er­a­tional readi­ness ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year, but no de­ci­sions have been made re­gard­ing which fac­ul­ties will oc­cu­py the site.

Since its con­struc­tion dur­ing the first Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, the cam­pus has been ex­pect­ed to host the Fac­ul­ty of Law as its flag­ship pro­gramme, along­side fac­ul­ties in Med­i­cine, Agri­cul­ture and Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.

In May last year, the Prime Min­is­ter warned the uni­ver­si­ty not to “test her,” in­sist­ing that the Fac­ul­ty of Law be pri­ori­tised.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said the fo­cus re­mains on restor­ing the cam­pus, which he de­scribed as hav­ing fall­en in­to dis­re­pair.

“We are get­ting the fa­cil­i­ty up to a state of readi­ness. The build­ing has fall­en in­to a state of dis­re­pair,” he said, adding that sev­er­al struc­tures re­quire sig­nif­i­cant re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

He al­so pushed back against re­ports that the uni­ver­si­ty would un­der­take its own re­pair works, in­clud­ing plumb­ing up­grades.

“There­fore, we want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that it is on­ly the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, through the PSAEL, that will be con­duct­ing all ... of the re­pairs and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the cam­pus so that we can have an in­take of stu­dents for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year,” Ho­sein said.

He added that Cab­i­net has not tak­en any de­ci­sion on which pro­grammes or fac­ul­ties will be placed at the cam­pus.

“Once the re­pairs are ready, we es­ti­mate that it will be fin­ished very soon,” he said, adding that the gov­ern­ment re­mains in con­trol of the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion process.

Ho­sein al­so dis­missed re­ports that UWI would car­ry out in­de­pen­dent works on the cam­pus, in­clud­ing $4 mil­lion in plumb­ing re­pairs, de­scrib­ing them as mis­lead­ing.

The com­ments fol­low a Guardian Me­dia re­port sug­gest­ing that four fac­ul­ties, in­clud­ing Law and an ex­pand­ed Med­i­cine pro­gramme, would im­me­di­ate­ly move in­to the cam­pus once re­pairs are com­plet­ed.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ex­pressed sur­prise at the cov­er­age, which they said im­plied de­ci­sions had al­ready been tak­en.

Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus re­mains on stu­dents.

“Our in­ter­est is the best in­ter­est of the stu­dents. That cam­pus was meant to serve as a rur­al part of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to give ac­cess to those in the south. That is still our in­ten­tion. We won’t let per­son­al­i­ties af­fect our poli­cies,” he said.

The Debe cam­pus, a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar project span­ning ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 acres, was left large­ly un­used af­ter the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion left of­fice in 2015, amid struc­tur­al con­cerns and main­te­nance is­sues.

UWI has in­vest­ed over $150 mil­lion of its own funds over the years to ad­vance con­struc­tion and car­ry out re­pairs, while gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors are ex­pect­ed to com­plete es­sen­tial works in time for the planned Au­gust open­ing.