WIGUT: UWI staff back pay finally near approval

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad has as­sured staff that the long-await­ed back pay owed to UWI St Au­gus­tine em­ploy­ees is now in its fi­nal stages of ap­proval, telling mem­bers, “It had to come. It was a le­gal agree­ment.”

Speak­ing at WIGUT’s Homage to Hero­ism: Decades of Ded­i­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day, Ram­per­sad said the union had re­peat­ed­ly urged mem­bers to re­main pa­tient de­spite years of de­lay.

“I know the back pay took some time in com­ing, but I kept say­ing keep calm, keep fo­cused, keep pos­i­tive,” she said. “Some­times there’s bu­reau­cra­cy in gov­ern­ment … things have to get ap­proved, and it has to go through var­i­ous stages.”

She ex­plained that pro­longed cor­re­spon­dence among the union, the cam­pus prin­ci­pal and gov­ern­ment min­istries con­tributed to the drawn-out process.

“When you write us, and we write prin­ci­pal, and prin­ci­pal writes gov­ern­ment, we have to wait for each to re­spond,” she said. “They kept telling us, ‘We are work­ing on it.’”

Ram­per­sad re­mind­ed mem­bers that staff had al­ready gone “ten years with­out it,” adding, “Wait a few days again now, a few weeks again.” She not­ed, too, “We have more to set­tle.”

Be­fore con­tin­u­ing with the pro­gramme, she called for ap­plause for all re­tirees, say­ing, “Let’s hear a round of ap­plause for the re­tirees.”

UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine praised the con­tri­bu­tions of re­tir­ing aca­d­e­m­ic, tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff.

“You re­tirees have been in­stru­men­tal in as­sist­ing our cam­pus in car­ry­ing out its vi­tal man­date,” she said. “Noth­ing hap­pens in the coun­try—I dare say in the re­gion—with­out UWI staff con­tribut­ing in some way.”

An­toine ref­er­enced a 2023 re­view of the uni­ver­si­ty’s out­put.

“Our staff mem­bers sit on over 400 com­mit­tees—na­tion­al, re­gion­al, in­ter­na­tion­al,” she said. “We com­ment on every pol­i­cy, every leg­is­la­tion, any­thing that’s hap­pen­ing.”

She al­so high­light­ed the in­sti­tu­tion’s glob­al recog­ni­tion.

“The vice-chan­cel­lor will speak about our rank­ings—be­tween three per cent and five per cent, num­ber one in the re­gion,” she said.

An­toine not­ed that vice-chan­cel­lor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les was al­so among those be­ing ho­n­oured.

“He has made an in­deli­ble mark on the land­scape of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies,” she said. “He has been one of our great­est am­bas­sadors, cham­pi­oning caus­es from repa­ra­tions to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.”

The cer­e­mo­ny recog­nised re­tirees from across fac­ul­ties, ad­min­is­tra­tive units and stu­dent sup­port ser­vices.