Guyanese students currently studying at the Hugh Wooding Law School (HWLS), in Trinidad and Tobago, have welcomed the introduction of full scholarships to allow qualifying students to offset some of the almost $5 million in costs they face annually.
“We suffer a lot of financial difficulties. When you total all the expenses per year, it is just under $5 million per year and that is just one year. The programme is two years, so when you multiply that by two, you have $10 million. It is not easy for the Guyanese student in Trinidad and Tobago to function properly; to even study properly. Yeah, we do perform well but it is not an easy task because you have to think about how [your family] is going to find that money. I know countless students who have cried because they can’t find the money, so I am thankful,” student representative Olivia Bess indicated.
Government, through the Ministry of the Presidency’s Department of Public Service, has announced that “a limited number of Scholarships” will be offered for completion of the Legal Education Certificate (LEC) at the HWLS.
The award criteria includes a Bachelor of Law Degree with a minimum Grade Point Average GPA of 3.3, which has been obtained within the last five years by a person 35 years old or under.
Applicants are also required to have an offer of acceptance from the HWLS for the 2019/2020 academic year.
Students entering the second year of HWLS also have the opportunity to qualify for the scholarship if they have passed the first year of studies with at least three A Grades.
Attorney General (AG) Basil Williams was asked yesterday to specify just how many scholarships make up the “limited number” advertised but maintained there has been no determination. “Let’s see what the applications look like,” he said.
Meanwhile, the students, who had requested a meeting with the AG to discuss the revised collaborative agreement between the University of Guyana, the Council of Legal Education and the University of the West Indies were also concerned with government’s failure to pay the 25 per cent economic costs for the academic year 2018/2019.
According to Williams, despite the sums being allocated in the 2018 budget, the Ministry’s Principal Assistant Secretary (Finance) failed to make the payment and instead remitted the monies to the Consolidated Fund.
This infraction was not noted until earlier this month, resulting in an additional financial burden for the 58 Guyanese students who were enrolled at the HWLS.
In September 2016, the government signed a three-year pact, which provided for the automatic entry of a quota of 25 eligible Guyanese students in HWLS. The 25 per cent economic costs was part of this agreement.
Meanwhile, Williams yesterday maintained that Guyana will have its own law school one way or another. He suggested that with the development of the oil and gas sector, Guyana will be where the money and work are and that it is possible the government might establish a school to operate outside of the CLE’s jurisdiction. “Here is where everything is happening, here is where all the resources will be, so perhaps if you have a law school built in Guyana and Guyanese lawyers are graduating, they practice in Guyana. I don’t know they need to go anywhere else to practice. Here is where the money will be and the opportunities,” he posited.
