Shas­tri Boodan

No re­open­ing date has been set for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) Debe Cam­pus, Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Sen­a­tor Prakash Per­sad says.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Per­sad said the cam­pus was about 70-75 per cent com­plete when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment left of­fice in 2015, but had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed dur­ing the decade it re­mained idle.

He was speak­ing af­ter the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of co­op­er­a­tion be­tween YTEPP Lim­it­ed and the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TIATT) at YTEPP’s Wood­ford Lodge, Ch­agua­nas.

“Any­thing that has been idle for 10 years, it was aban­doned for 10 years, so a lot of in­fra­struc­ture need­ed re­ju­ve­na­tion again. So that is why there’s a de­lay,” Per­sad said.

He said work was pro­gress­ing as quick­ly as pos­si­ble but would not say when the cam­pus would re­open.

“It will open when the place is fin­ished prop­er­ly,” he said.

Per­sad said the cost of com­plet­ing the cam­pus would ex­ceed its orig­i­nal $70 mil­lion bud­get, as the pro­longed clo­sure had dam­aged in­fra­struc­ture.

Much of the cur­rent work in­volves me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing sys­tems, he said, in­clud­ing air con­di­tion­ing and plumb­ing not im­me­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble.

“The build­ing works are com­ing along, but some of these sort of MEP works, you know, air con­di­tion­ing, plumb­ing, etc., which we won’t see, which is un­der­ground, you have to, when you face the prob­lems, then you need to fix it. So that’s what’s hap­pen­ing at present,” he said.