Karim: UTT on the brink of collapse

Former Tertiary Education Minister Fazal Karim has condemned the firing of an additional 199 employees of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT).

In a statement, Karim said the Rowley-led PNM continued to dismantle the UTT with “sustained and arbitrary faculty and staff lay-offs.”

He described the Government's action, mere days before the start of the new academic year, as “heartless and wicked.”

Karim lamented that Education Minister Anthony Garcia, Minister of State in the ministry Lovell Francis, and the Board of Governors of the UTT, have failed to manage the affairs of the university.

“In just four short years, the PNM has fired close to 500 UTT employees, crippled student enrolment, shattered faculty morale, closed down campuses, and failed to open the $2 billion vanity Tamana Campus,” the statement said.

In the wake of these mass firings, Karim said corruption abounds at the university. “Professors have been hired without the required qualifications. Senior executive and managerial positions have been created for friends and benefactors of the PNM. “Foreign staff and consultants have been recruited at the expense of nationals. Critical programmes for national development have been dismantled. He stated that the trail of destruction left behind by the firestorm of the Rowley-led Government is nearing a point of no return,” he added.

As former Tertiary Education minister, Karim said that it pained him to see the havoc created by the PNM in four short years.

He empathised with the employees of UTT and the thousands of workers who have lost their jobs under the PNM Government.

Karim said, "I urge every worker who was fired, 'constructively dismissed', or whose contract was not renewed under the PNM to -- fire the PNM at the polls and get Trinidad and Tobago working again."