The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus is fac­ing mount­ing pres­sure, as ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 ex­am­i­na­tion grades re­main un­sub­mit­ted due to an on­go­ing salary dis­pute with lec­tur­ers.

Pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT), Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, con­firmed the de­layed sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day and warned that protest ac­tions may es­ca­late when the new aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gins next week. This, as she con­firmed that there had been no new de­vel­op­ments since pro­vid­ing a re­vised salary ad­just­ment to the uni­ver­si­ty. 

“This mea­sure is not tar­get­ing stu­dents; this mea­sure is tar­get­ing a quick and rea­son­able re­mit. We nev­er tar­get stu­dents; we are very con­sci­en­tious. We are go­ing to start teach­ing on Mon­day, so the stu­dents will get their teach­ing. What they won’t get is their grades. We’ve asked all var­i­ous de­part­ments, in­clud­ing the li­brary, reg­istry, and ban­ner. We’ve asked all sys­tem op­er­a­tors to shut down op­er­a­tions,” she said.

Since last year, WIGUT has been ag­i­tat­ing for a res­o­lu­tion to the salary ne­go­ti­a­tions at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. The union’s de­mands cen­ter around salary ne­go­ti­a­tions that have been un­re­solved since 2014.

Staff at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus have not re­ceived salary ad­just­ments, un­like their coun­ter­parts in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, who have se­cured sig­nif­i­cant rais­es.

Ram­per­sad is now call­ing for swift ac­tion and has con­firmed that WIGUT will be meet­ing with the Stu­dent Guild to­mor­row. She main­tained that stu­dents were not be­ing held to ran­som. 

“We know they are not hap­py with it. We are not hap­py ei­ther, but we are left with no op­tion af­ter work­ing for 11 years on the same salary, and it’s un­fair we have gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials get­ting 47 per cent and more and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers who are very qual­i­fied on this 2014 pit­tance.” 

Last No­vem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley di­rect­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to take a more di­rect role in re­solv­ing the im­passe over salary in­creas­es at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. Yes­ter­day, a se­nior of­fi­cial at the Min­istry of Fi­nance in­di­cat­ed that there were no new up­dates. 

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent ques­tions to the uni­ver­si­ty re­gard­ing the de­vel­op­ment but there was no re­sponse up to press time.