Bridgetown.
The Cave Hill Campus of the University of the the West Indies (UWI) is facing unprecedented “hardships” for students and staff, and an “embarrassing” inability to pay suppliers and workers on time due to the delay by the Government of Barbados to pay it almost $200 million in economic costs and tuition fees.
The campus woes were outline in Prinicipal Sir Hilary Beckles annual report to the institution's council. It stated things were so bad because of the delay in receiving state funds that “the campus has been placed in the unprecedented and embarrassing position of being unable to settle accounts with suppliers as promptly as it had done in the past”.
“More recent, the delays have impacted on the campus’ ability to pay wages in a timely manner,” Sir Hilary said.
He noted the campus was forced to continue with a number of budget cutting strategies “to cope with the financial crisis which threatened to have a severe impact on the core operations on the campus”.
According to Sir Hilary, for a third straight year the UWI has “continued freezing vacancies, thus creating unprecedented hardships for students and the academic and administrative staff”.
Other measures included strict monitoring of teaching loads, use of energy saving strategies, reductions in overseas travel and greater use of teleconferencing, deferral of all but the most critical maintenance activities, and reduction in overtime work “to its most essential minimum.
“In addition, resources from capital projects had to be diverted and proceeds of income generating activities utilised approved government contributions. The campus continued to place heavy reliance on the receipt of funds from external donors as well as self financing activities", says Sir Hilary.
He added that the nonpayment of funds for special projects developed in collaboration with Government “adversely affected research and innovation initiatives”.
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