UG students to protest tuition fees hike today

Mar 30, 2017 News

The Governing Council of the University of Guyana (UG) is expected to meet today, March 30. Among the issues to be addressed, is the proposed 35 percent hike in tuition fees.

University of Guyana students gathered in the George Walcott Lecture Theatre yesterday.

Although the proposal was made by the institution’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Ivelaw Griffith, it is the Council that is tasked with making the final decision.
In an effort to ensure that members of the council are aware of the strain that an increase in tuition fees would put on students, a silent protest is planned for today.
The decision to gather outside of the Education Lecture Theatre (ELT) at the Turkeyen, East Coast Demerara campus at midday today, was taken during a lengthy interactive session with students and their union representatives at the George Walcott Lecture Theatre (GWLT).
President of the University of Guyana Student Society (UGSS), Ron Glasgow, told Kaieteur News yesterday that the protest will take the form of a silent picketing exercise.
“Most likely it will be placards and a silent stand. We are going to stand in front of the (ELT) building…just to be there and show our presence and our dissatisfaction,” Glasgow said.
Professor Griffith, during an on- campus Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, proposed that that the increases be applied incrementally.
The first 15 percent of the increase is proposed to be effective from September – the beginning of the new academic year. A 10 percent increase is planned to be applied next year, followed by the other 10 percent increase in 2019.
“The UGSS stance is the stance of the students, and the stance of the students is that they don’t want an increase in the fees,” Glasgow posited.
Speaking with Kaieteur News yesterday, Professor Griffith highlighted the need for the University of Guyana to have a better resource pool.
“The university’s resource pool needs to come from at least three sources – government subvention, tuition and fees, and any merchandizing and private fund raising that we are doing,” the Vice Chancellor said.
In the 2017 National Budget, the Government allocated some $2.9B to support UG’s operations and construct a teaching and learning complex for mathematics and science.
Nonetheless, UGSS is standing firm against the proposed increases, especially since they believe that the consultations leading up to such a big decision were grossly inadequate. This was clarified at yesterday’s session with students.
Glasgow, who following the announcement, was accused of not having the best interest of the student population, said, “The reality is that the consultations happened during the course of about a seven-day period. There were three consultations.”
He added that the consultations were nothing substantive to satisfy the concerns of the students and its representative body.
As the alarm was sounded for a call to protest, Marketing Student, Romel Roopnarine implored that students try their best to show up at the picket, since numbers is key to sending a strong message to the UG administration.

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