Noble: The Testy Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar—and the tale of the Penal-Debe Campus

Over the past few weeks, Kitchener’s 1961 calypso Take yuh meat out of meh rice kept ringing in my ears. The calypso tells an amusing story about two hungry people, one a Bajan and the other a Trinidadian, who concocted a plan to satisfy their hunger.

“A Bajan and a Trinidadian dying with starvation/ The Bajan say, “Look, Trini, let we make a cook/ I put the rice, you going put the meat/ Then we going both have something to eat”/ But when the pot was nearly to done/ The Bajan decide to pull a fast one.

The Bajan then said to Trini,/ “Man, don’t tell lies on me/ I never told you that we join and cook up in two/ What I mention, I can repeat/ I said to lend me a piece of meat”/ Trini so vex, he begin to cry/ “Baje, in front my eye you telling a lie?”

Not for one moment do I suggest that the Vice-Chancellor and the then-Chancellor of The UWI, both Barbadians, were trying to outsmart the then-Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Or even vice versa.

But the tale of the Debe-Penal Campus has more gaps and questions than answers. Before we rush to condemn anyone, we should examine the timeline of events that caused the Prime Minister to erupt in frustration.

We should also agree with Sunity Maharaj: “To frame the discussion about the UWI Penal-Debe South Campus purely in terms of location is to shortchange the conversation that has long been needed about this TT$509.4 million investment in the expansion of the University of the West Indies.”

The Express newspaper recently reported that our new Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar issued a stern warning to administrators at The University of the West Indies (The UWI) over the long-delayed opening of its Penal-Debe campus, telling them: “Don’t test me.”

Describing the failure to open the campus over the past decade as a “betrayal”, Persad-Bissessar urged the administrators to step aside and allow her Government to take charge of the long-overdue opening.

Adamant that the site was for a law school, she seemed to have forgotten her stated objective at the time of the sod turning: “It is also our duty to furnish our students with an attractive and diverse range of programmes that meet local demands and international standards.”

Betrayal is a powerful word that evokes the loss of trust and faith. It may involve disloyalty.

Mrs Persad-Bissessar was not definitive about who was the Judas. But Professor Clement Sankat’s words about the way The UWI conducts its business is instructive.

“While I would not go so far as to say that governments interfere with the running of the University, there is strong representation—mainly ministerial—at the University Council, the very highest sanctum where decisions are made.

“[…] As in all relationships, the challenge is to find the balance so that one partner does not dominate the other.”

Can we imagine the awkward position Professor Prakash Persad will occupy when he attends his first Council meeting? Why the outburst?

A few days later, in a head-spinning move, Mrs Persad-Bissessar announced that the lands had not been transferred to The UWI!

Former UWI principal, Professor Brian Copeland then confirmed that during his tenure, the University had permission to occupy the land and was seeking to have it formally vested in UWI. So, The UWI has committed funds to this project with little or no security of tenure? Take your bone out of my rice!

Who owns the land? We do not know.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar turned the sod for the University on 30 January 2012. However, in May 2012, a stubborn farmer, Shaheed Diljohn, 49, refused to surrender his rights to a two-acre parcel of land at La Fortune, despite being offered $140,000 by the Estate Management and Business Development Company Ltd (EMBD).

(The EMBD has the responsibility for the development and distribution of all state agricultural lands.) So, is it the EMBD? How did they get there?

Yet, in April 2012, Professor Sankat reported that funding for the entire project had been secured.

“The award of the contract comes after a Cabinet note, dated 13 March, confirming total funding for the project in the amount of TT$509,358,377. Some TT$144 million will be made available in the 2012 fiscal year, TT$288.2 million in 2013, and TT$71.2 million in 2014.”

He further asserted, “the university had done a thorough evaluation and a recommendation already has been approved in accordance with the proper process and systems in place.” The Invitation for Tender was issued on 8 December 2011.

But was this a case of “hurry dog eat raw meat” or “putting the cart before the horse”?

Professor Copeland reports that The UWI realised that the soil conditions were problematic. Were any soil tests done before construction began?

This omission would not be surprising. In 2013, the Couva Hospital was built for $1.6 billion without a site-specific study.

Chairman of the National Building Code Committee, Shyankaran Lalla, asked: “Did the engineers and technical advisers do a due diligence study in evaluating the risk before the site was recommended for the construction of new buildings?”

He urged inter-agency collaboration and consultation on key issues to avoid such errors, in keeping with regulations for earthquake-resistant construction, and emphasised that “the failure to do so will result in the collapse of the (Couva) building during an earthquake”.

Copeland added: “The contractor was not living up to the agreement. The timeline was not being met, and there was not enough staff or workers on-site.” That observation aligns with an observation on the same contractor at the UTT Tamana site.

“Despite failing to deliver the $200 million eTecK headquarters by its contractual completion date of February of this year, and despite being unable to meet the conditions of an interim agreement made between itself and the eTecK management, China Jiangsu has forged ahead with work on the UTT campus by starting construction at the site on the UTT’s $975 million signature building.

“Last week, roughly two dozen workers and two cranes were at work on the UTT signature building.”

This contractor was the subject of the inquiry regarding the Las Alturas buildings in Morvant. Afra Raymond and the Joint Consultative Council (they wrote The UWI) wondered how the company could qualify.

By 2013, the contractor was sanctioned by the World Bank for similar behaviour in Ethiopia.

The UWI terminated the contracts, but the exact timing is unknown. The UWI St Augustine campus assumed responsibility for completing the project through its Projects Office and, in collaboration with the project consultants, developed a completion strategy for Phase 1A of the campus.

The Express report on the matter contained two curious statements: “have been impeded by unforeseen factors” and “has taken steps to recover damages from China Jiangsu”.

Polite language from The UWI.

We also know that the original estimate was $499 million, but it had ballooned to $600 million. The UWI also had an operating deficit of TT$45 million.

In June 2014, then-Minister Fazal Karim instructed The UWI to tighten its belt and submit a comprehensive strategy to raise money by 30 April.

In 2022, then-Finance Minister Colm Imbert remarked: “We have been faced with a challenge with the St Augustine campus continuing to ask us for large sums of money. That is the subject of a lot of confusion within the University right now.

“Because there was a report indicating, more or less, these are my words, that UWI may have overextended itself into growth. It has grown to become a huge organisation. But, in doing that, growing at such a rapid pace, it outgrew its ability to finance itself.”

Copeland admitted to asking for a one-time payment of $20 million and an introduction to US authorities to facilitate agreements. Champagne taste, but mauby pockets is a thing!

Covid-19 happened in the period between Karim’s and Imbert’s comments.

Marla Dukharan said: “T&T has raised [and plans to spend] more than any other country in the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, which has a population of over 10 million persons. We congratulate T&T’s Minister of Finance for his level of disclosure.

“In 2020, the country withdrew approximately US$1.2 billion from the HSF. That sum covers the period from 1 January 2020, to 31 December 2020, and the money was drawn down in fiscal years 2020 and 2021.

“In fiscal 2020, US$900 million was withdrawn from the Fund, and so far, for fiscal 2021, US$300 million has been withdrawn for budget support.”

Would that cash have been better spent on the Debe/Penal campus?

Lessons?

Power talks. Forget the fable of ‘we all win’. With all the national educational needs of 2010-2015, half a billion dollars were committed to a single project in the heart of the constituencies of two influential politicians.

The $1.6 billion Couva hospital also needed more funds and staff to be operationalised. The language in the Debe/Penal argument avoided the Costaatt debacle, where the then-PNM Government, and leader Dr Keith Rowley in particular, was accused of racial discrimination.

In a Cabinet reshuffle, Rowley was thought to have been removed for supporting affirmative action in student admission to Costaatt institutions. Source: 12/20/2003, Newsday.

How should an underachieving group receive the help it needs? We have not addressed this, but we bemoan the surge in crime.

In the same article, Dr Selwyn Cudjoe observed that “Indian teachers were not teaching African children with the same enthusiasm”. We should note that upon assuming office, the People’s Partnership relocated Costaatt to Chaguanas, away from the workers who congregate in Port of Spain.

Privatise benefits and socialise the costs. The benefits of the Debe/Penal campus are primarily described in the context of the immediate region.

At the lower levels, the lands have been under siege from land grabbers over the past decade, coinciding with the construction of the University. At the higher levels, there has been no apparent consensus over the years about the objective of this University expansion.

In the case of the touted Western Jamaican campus, our local commentators do not mention the role and significant investment by regional business people. The Montego Bay campus was established in 2008 as ‘Mona in the West’ and reflects the demands of critical growth industries in the region.

The taxpayer bears the costs of the proposed Law Faculty.

 

Will the Debe/Penal community do like the Montego Bay business community and share the load?

The arguments about us mirroring the Western Jamaican campus fail to account for their refining of those objectives:

“The University of the West Indies came to Western Jamaica about 10 to eleven years ago, and it was in response to try and grow the institution. But I will confess that this growth was based on trying to replicate the Mona campus, which we now realise was not the right thing.

 

“We have now decided to make a different projection. We want to connect with Vision 2030, which, of course, is trying to get the human infrastructure and the human capital development where it should be.

“The University is that engine which should provide sustainable and organised growth for Jamaica.” Professor Dale Webber, Campus Principal.

We do not acknowledge their drive to get full-tuition-paying foreigners in search of a quality education.

Could it be that in the haste to have a global university or even to build out a school, there was no acknowledgement of the watering down of the intellectual ‘brandy’? Are there people of the calibre of Webber?

Maybe we will come to our senses and realise what is economically feasible. Perhaps we will refine our focus and adopt a plan similar to the Jamaican model.

Patrick Manning, at the time of the Costaatt debate, expressed the following: “Our job is to unify the society.”

He added that the Government’s education policy was designed to ensure equity in the society. Is it too late to dream?