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Vice Chancellor insists Digitising Project will benefit UG
“What you do with you spare time is your business,” said Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Professor Jacob Opadeyi, as he responded to criticisms relating to him being awarded an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) contract to digitise property records currently stored at the Deeds Registry.
The project is slated to be completed by January, at which point persons will be able to access their property deeds via the internet. “When the project is finished and you want to get a copy of your Deed, you go to the internet. You don’t go to the Registry, you don’t go and line up, and when you go to the bank and you want to apply for a loan, they don’t tell you to bring your document, you go to the internet and get it,” explained Professor Opadeyi.
UG Vice Chancellor, Professor Jacob Opadeyi
In fact, during an interview with media operatives on Friday, the Vice Chancellor was adamant that “I am the only one in the whole of the Caribbean who has the experience of having done anything like that.”
“If I give it up, then somebody else from Belgium would get it. Anybody could apply…I saw it in the newspaper and so I applied. It is not something that is clandestine, it was in the newspaper; everybody is free to apply and I applied,” said Professor Opadeyi as he defended his move to bid for the project.
He disclosed too that although he had initially bid for the project under the name of the University, he was subsequently informed that the project was not intended to be for companies but rather it is an individual consultancy under the rule of the IDB. “I had to withdraw and then apply as a person,” disclosed Professor Opadeyi.
The digitising contract is valued at US$193,000, and according to Professor Opadeyi, “it is a good thing. It is something that this University should do more.” He was keen to highlight that his being awarded the contract will see the University itself being able to secure some 15 per cent of the contract, an amount that should translate to about US$28,000. “That would buy for this University 50 computers because of the contract that I won. Furthermore, 40 students are going to be hired to work under that project for five months,” the Vice Chancellor said.
He pointed out that the transformational project, whereby over 1000 records will be digitised, will see the hired students working two shifts per day. And since he would merely be offering knowledge, the Vice Chancellor insisted that he will in no way be side-tracked from his role as Vice Chancellor. “My time is management skills. I am not going to be going and doing the project myself; 40 students are going to be hired…I have done this for Grenada before; I have the manual. If I spend one hour with the students, they will work for 40 days without me being there,” asserted Professor Opadeyi.
Moreover, he questioned, “Can we allow that skill not to be transferred? That project will not cost me any time at all because the template is there…we are selling management skills…how do you manage, how to delegate responsibility, also how to transfer technology…”
According to Professor Opadeyi, the project is going to take place in three centres – Suddie, New Amsterdam and Georgetown – and students from each of those areas will be recruited to work on the project.
Moreover, he disclosed that “to me, it is an exciting moment for the University where we are bringing in our entrepreneurship so that anybody in this University who has any skills to offer can go out and offer it and from there we can start.”
The Vice Chancellor is confident that such undertakings could help the University to become self-sufficient. It was not so long ago, he disclosed, that the University was able to run a few courses and secure funds that were used to procure a bus.
However, he was firm in stating that, “when you do your job, make sure that it doesn’t affect your teaching, so you cannot postpone your class because I have a consultancy…and I can do this consultancy,” insisted the Vice Chancellor, even as he disclosed that “I was up since three o’ clock sending off documents.”
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