Bridgetown.
Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Sir Hilary Beckles, is calling of the Government of Barbados to sit down with him develop a strategy to stem the growing debt problem of the campus.
According to Sir Hilary, the debut problems at the campus began to increase significantly with the death of the late Prime Minister David Thompson who had a firm grasp on the UWI's finances.
"We now have a debut problem, the debut problem has origins and it has effects. I believe that we should begin with a study of this debut profile, its orgin and its impact. The problem begun with the death of the late Prime Minister David Thompson. He was not only the Minister of Finance. David Thompson was the Chairman of the UWI's Grants Committe, he was responsible for the financing of all the campuses and had a bird's eye view of the entire University of the West Indies, its funding model, its funding system and resoure allocation. He had all of that information and he took most of it with him and that was a sad blow for us", Sir Hilary said.
He added that the retirement of William Layne, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, who was looking after the UWI accounts for over 20 years was another blow.
"With the death of Prime Minister Thompson and the retirement of Willie Layne, the collective memory of the Ministry of Finance took a nose dive and we have suffered as a result of that", says Sir Hilary.
He stated that the debt of the Campus is approaching $200 million from an estimated $20 million in 2007 and expressed the UWI hope of meeting with the newly elected government to discuss how to resolve the debt issue.
"The debut of our Campus is larger than the budget so we are in great difficulty, our hope is that sometime in the next couple of weeks or months that we can sit down with the Government and handle this question, because it is important to the university and the region", Sir Hilary said
He made the comments during a recent lecture commemorating the 50th anniversary of Cave Hill Campus.
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