Dear Editor,
I respond to a reported statement by Ms Chandrapal that my age and lack of research were the reasons why my service at UG was terminated (SN, February 4). May I remind readers, it was ended not by a submission from the UG administrators and/or the academic community but by five UG Councillors all of whom are PPP members and three of whom are PPP Members of Parliament.
It has to be both a travesty and a tragedy that someone like Indra Chandarpal could sit on the University Council and make statements on the ability of academics when she has no background in higher education. I honestly don’t know if Ms Chandarpal has the required CXCs to enter UG as a student. Ms Chandarpal, as far as I know, has no record in the field of academia, scholarship or education.
She has never been involved in any governmental project that involves academia or higher education, but she is on the council of the country’s only university commenting on highly trained academics who have worked at UG for almost three decades. By now, most citizens not only in Guyana but in the world know that retirement at sixty is going out in most countries and there isn’t a university in the world where the retirement age is sixty.
UG’s current Vice-Chancellor is seventy. The Bursar is over sixty-five. There are over twenty-five UG academics at the moment who are over sixty. No person can be that limited to say that in Guyana, an academic should retire at sixty. It is interesting to note that both Mr and Mrs Chandarpal are older than me. Mr Navin Chandarpal is sixty-five and is a public servant who has been recently employed.
Ms Chandarpal’s statement provides further evidence that the academics are never going to sit silent and allow the present structure of the UG Council to continue. It is clear from Ms Chandarpal’s utterance that the council decided my fate, not the academic community. This nonsense and travesty will stop at UG and the academics are inflexible in their demands that the UG Council will no longer be allowed to usurp the function of the academics.
It is not for five PPP Councillors to decide the type of contracts UG academics get; that is the work of the various UG academic committees. Which section of the university told Ms Chandarpal that I did not do research? Which section of the university told Ms Chandarpal that a sixty-year-old cannot be retained at UG? It is clear from Ms Chandarpal’s observation that Council determines the state of affairs at UG. That must come to and end. There is agreement by both APNU and the AFC that the University of Guyana Act will be amended to remove the more than nine Councilors who are appointed by the Government of Guyana and who are always members of the ruling party.
Members of Operation Rescue UG have spoken to the leadership of both the APNU and AFC. I have spoken to Mr Granger and most of the AFC leaders on the UG fiasco. Mr Ramjatttan and Kathy Hughes, two AFC parliamentarians, were in the picket line. The role of the UG Council will change if not tomorrow, or next month or next year, it will change. There will no longer be a place for party hacks who have total control of the university.
One of the demands of Operation Rescue UG that has not been made public is that UG academics must have a say in the search for a new Vice-Chancellor. Whenever the dialogue starts, as suggested by Roger Luncheon, the committee has one demand which is unchanging – the UG Council’s structure has to be changed.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
