…at UG
UG unions – of workers and Senior Staff – are protesting the VC Ivelaw Griffith’s studied refusal to address their requests for their wages and salaries to be reviewed in line with what’s been standard with – the rest of workers in State services. And it’s not as if these folks – who’re moulding the minds of our best and brightest at the highest institution of learning in the land – are asking for the 50 per cent increase the Cabinet thought was the minimum needed to keep body and soul together. All they proposed was a 15 per cent bump.
The unkindest cut of all was the unions pointing to an increase in the governmental budget of $483 million for salaries and wondering what in the world happened to that. Seems at a meeting with the VC – which they had to convene since he’d been refusing to place this item on his agenda – he told them there ain’t going to be any raise for them unless student tuition increased!! The unions are incensed the VC’s pitting them against the student body since his manoeuvre would make it clear the “greedy” lecturers are extorting booty from the impecunious students!!
So much for worshipping at the tree of knowledge for its own sake!! But the unions should’ve also asked as to what happened to the $483 million. And they’d find out what it cost UG to pay the Vice Chancellor; three Deputy Vice Chancellors; Officer for Strategic Initiatives; Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice Chancellor. That’s right – a Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice Chancellor!! This is a man with delusions of grandeur!! A man who can certainly talk the talk about promising to deliver the moon and stars for his university – so he can get the big bucks.
But did those who hired him check out his credentials on delivering the goods? As President of Fort Valley State University in the US South between 2013 and 2015, the University suffered a 25 per cent decline in enrolment from fall 2013 to fall 2014 because of policies he introduced. They booted him out by May 2015 – even though contractually they had to carry his US$20,000+ monthly salary of the rest of the year!!
Didn’t he promise to fund his plans for UG from the Diaspora, then took 14 staff with him to NY and spent more than he raised?? Has anyone seen the new, slick, UG magazine “Renaissance” that’s more about Griffith than the University? Who exactly at UG’s producing stuff that’s gonna be published by Ian Randle? What about the Caribbean Press?
Quick now…think what Dr Thomas Mozart, Ifa Kush and Ivelaw Griffith have in common!!
…round five on GECOM Head
Who woulda thought appointing a new GECOM head would turn out to be such a knock down and drag out fight? But your Eyewitness is still of the opinion this is the “occasion for the war” and not the “cause of the war”. Seems Brigadier Granger believes in stretching the enemy lines very thin by attacking on several fronts simultaneously.
GECOM has to be seen in tandem with SOCU and Pradoville II, Red House eviction of the PPP, SARA taking an inventory of “tall buildings” in Georgetown and demanding access of GRA tax files of citizens, Wales sugar estate closure and threatening three others, restaffing the top tier of the courts, appointing 99 per cent of the Permanent Secretaries from his ethnic base etc..etc. The GECOM Head’s simply insurance to legitimise the return of the PNC to Government – without the AFC on their coattails, come 2015.
In total war…the rule is don’t let up and show no mercy…
…over baigan seed
Well, the other foot’s dropped in the faceoff between City Hall and the PNC leader as to who has more testicular fortitude.
With the Police called out to take on SCS’s clamp brigade’, looks like City Hall now has goadie! Bigger is not necessarily better!
