UG workers protest re-election of Chancellor

Jun 24, 2012 News

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Unions representing the teaching staff and workers of the University of Guyana are protesting the re-appointment of Professor Compton Bourne as Chancellor.
“ As far as the Unions and Operation Rescue are concerned, Prof. Bourne has not demonstrated the leadership qualities that are needed to rescue the University as it approaches its 50th Anniversary.  The University of Guyana, and indeed Guyana itself, needs a Chancellor who is courageous,  bold, resourceful, a consensus builder, and one who can make change happen,” the unions said in a statement.
The University Administration Friday announced that Bourne was re-elected for another three years, pushing aside the views of the teaching staff and the workers.

“The University Administration, in response to questions raised by a few media houses about recent calls by the University of Guyana Workers Union and Senior Staff Association, for the resignation of Chancellor Professor Compton Bourne, advises that it does not support the call for his resignation,” the University said in a statement.
The University Administration stated that Bourne was re-elected at a recent meeting, and that it “looks forward to working with Chancellor Bourne, the Council, all university staff and stakeholders, to charter a new course for the institution.”
In a statement yesterday, the Workers Union and the Senior Staff Association said they were profoundly disappointed.
The two unions noted that the “re-appointment that was styled a re-election” was made by a Council whose life had expired since March 31 but which was extended by two months to June 30 “and therefore has a limited life span.”
The unions stated that the Council remains and more so is making critical decisions notwithstanding a strong call by the Unions, supported by hundreds of signatures on a petition to be laid in Parliament, for the appointment of a new Council. They consider Bourne’s continued tenure to be an affront to them.
Further, they said it was with a mixture of sadness and disgust that they were not informed of the decision.
According to the unions, Mr. Bourne’s three-year re-appointment comes after a year at the helm of the Council.  They noted that the initial appointment of Prof. Bourne was met with great optimism by all University staff, particularly academics.
“Here we believed was an eminent academic who had led a University of the West Indies Campus and the regional Caribbean Development Bank and who therefore was unquestionably capable. Prof. Bourne’s stewardship of the UG to date however has been more than disappointing. In his first year, Mr. Bourne has managed to make a mockery of the UG Acts and Statutes and alienated the very staff he leads,” the unions stated.
They accused Bourne of presiding over the Appointments Committee to declare ‘null and void’ contracts that were properly executed by Council even though it is only Council that could make such a declaration.”
The unions said that Bourne facilitated the setting of a precedent that University lecturers can be fired at any whim and fancy of the Council because they are employed at the pleasure of the Council.
The unions accuse Bourne of showing manifest contempt for all the stakeholders of the University Community, “other than perhaps those whom he considers his social equals, by refusing even to acknowledge our  correspondence, much less dialogue with us despite our several attempts to engage him.”
The unions further stated that Mr Bourne attracted precious little by way of funding,”thereby entrenching the sense we have that the University is condemned to continue to operate with a 250-million dollar recurring financial deficit at Turkeyen.”
In addition, the unions stated that he has by consent or silence sanctioned the practice of financing this deficit by taking an annual advance from the Student Loan facility and has overlooked the illegality that the University does not remit the GRA tax, NIS and Credit Union deductions from employees’ salaries to these agencies on a timely basis.
“He ignores the fact that our students and staff continue to work and study under grossly substandard conditions that he would have never dared to offer the staff and students at the St. Augustine Campus thus displaying disdain for his fellow Guyanese,” the unions stated.
For this reason, the Workers Union and the Senior Staff Association said that the offer and acceptance of a new three  year appointment that was made behind closed doors “ a process that revealingly lacked transparency”  fills them with dread.
The two unions said they believed that outstanding Guyanese living in Guyana, such as Mr. Yesu Persaud, Prof. Sr. Noel Menez, and Prof. Winston McGowan, could serve with great distinction.
The unions contended that two of Prof. Bourne’s similarly eminent predecessors, Prof. Calestous Juma and Prof Bertie Ramcharran resigned as Chancellors of the UG rather than preside over a Council that compromises long-standing, globally held academic principles.
“Prof. Bourne would be advised to consider the real possibility that his tenure at the University of Guyana has already started to tarnish his hitherto distinguished reputation,” the unions stated.

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