Dear Editor,
I only know what your newspaper reported on the unemployment of Freddie Kissoon by UG. According to present rules, academics must meet certain criteria of age and accomplishment. But based on your reports of what the PPP councillors said, I can see neither the urgency nor the logic for Mr Kissoon’s dismissal and proscription of further employment there; neither do I see the need to advertise for a Registrar in place of Vincent Alexander.
I was employed at UG from 1982 to 2003 under PNC and PPP administrations. I was a senior high school teacher when I was ‘retrenched’ from St Stanislaus College in March 1982 for obviously political reasons. I was re-employed only because my students were marching along Brickdam with placards, and influential parents were outraged. The students were concerned not only that they would be left without an ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level teacher before their exams in June, but also at the injustice and stupidity of the Ministry of Education.
I thanked the students for their initiative on my behalf, but, since they were almost all minors I urged them to return to classes and take the GCE trial exams they were boycotting. Because sudden change can be unpleasant and often violent, I told them to study to change the world into what they wanted it to be. Many of them, now in their forties are doing just that.
It is to the credit of the late Dr George Walcott that he encouraged me to apply to lecture at UG in spite of my trouble with the Ministry of Education. I was a student of his and he knew what I could do.
When I sent in my resignation from St Stanislaus I did not state where I was going, because even though I was relatively small fry, I knew of Walter Rodney and UG. Teachers at that time were not allowed to seek employment elsewhere, so I was ordered to the Ministry of Education at 26, Brickdam for them to approve my resignation.
When I got there and announced myself, I was asked to sit outside. I heard voices in different tones of discussion behind the door, but after half an hour, the door opened and I was informed I could go. I had taught 10 years at high school and PAYE, NIS, and Widows and Orphans monies were religiously deducted from my salary over the years, but only some years of the NIS and absolutely none of the Widows and Orphans records could be found.
Both UG Vice-Chancellors Dennis Irvine and George Walcott were chemists. They knew what it took to build, equip and train for science and technology. I got my first degree at UG and remembered when the corridors were still polished. There was a chemical balance room where each student of chemistry had access to analytical balances reading to the 4th decimal place in grammes. One of them today would cost about a million dollars.
Up to 8 years ago the entire Chemistry department had only one such balance. Research was practically nil. There was plenty to research. You only had to look at what the final year students produced every year to see the possibilities. So people often ask why these can then not be published and peer-reviewed for lecturers to get the credit for promotions, because it is essentially their expertise and direction that brought the students’ works to fruition. There are many reasons.
1. The level of the projects is not necessarily of universal interest. Eg, measurement of the content of lead (from the exhausts of vehicles using leaded fuel) in the grass on either side of a street simply confirmed that the wind blew the exhausts chiefly in a certain direction and exercised the student’s abilities to perform the analyses.
2. When the level is of universal interest, as in where a theory is to be confirmed or a new theory is to be proposed, the ever fewer working instruments cannot produce results even to a hundredth of the required accuracy to qualify as valid. Eg, the most accurate instrument ever possessed by UG was a German interferometer that could measure to the 8th decimal place in refractive index. We had analytical balances at the time, but no glassware of the required tolerance to prepare sample solutions. The instrument duly gave the results to 8 decimal places, but only the first 4 had any significance. And when one day a student dropped a glass cell that was part of the interferometer we could not go out into the shop to buy a replacement.
3. If perchance, however, some new species of plant are found in our biodiverse country, and we had equipment to study them at whatever low resolution we could manage, this could qualify as research. But what happened was that the stuff would be spirited away to foreign universities for their study. I am not suggesting this practice be forcibly changed, because it was people from those universities who usually identify new species. The last Guyanese biologist who achieved that in Guyana, quickly found that he got nowhere here, and left us for the better endowed foreign universities.
4. It was said that there were grants available for research. In 1984 I applied for one. I did not get it because there were others senior to me who had also applied. However, they did not remain long enough in the university to complete their projects.
5. After the return of democracy in 1992, there was much hope. However, ex-President Hoyte’s schoolmate, Prof Craig, who had shortly before taken over as Vice-Chancellor from George Walcott, seemed to have permanently branded UG as a PNC hotbed in the eyes of the PPP government when he shifted the UG financial year to accommodate a 100% increase in salary to academic staff. The government eventually paid up, but students had to also start paying $127,000 a year. Hope for research died again and was never resurrected.
6. The grants that did become available were too minuscule. I never bothered to apply. I bought equipment for myself when I could afford it from my salary so that I could at least function with some credibility when I held classes and laboratory sessions. Sometimes I was refunded by the bursary when the amounts were small enough.
7. I watched enterprising young lecturers apply for and not get the tiny grants. These lecturers would line up their work load, access the necessary overseas expertise and facilities, and identify the local equipment and chemicals. If, after all that, the grant actually became approved, the money never came. But the poor researcher would not know what was happening and that no money would be forthcoming. So after a year and no money, which would have been used to buy essentials, not to pay the lecturer for doing research, the local chemicals identified would have been used up or expired and not replenished, some equipment would fail or become unavailable, and the overseas facilities would have other priorities, which would not include future Guyanese applicants.
Every year the staff completed an assessment form, in which we were asked to identify research and other constraints. As far as I am aware, Mr Kissoon is the only person, while he was on the Appointments Committee or Council (I forget which), who collated all the constraints reported every year ad nauseam by the lecturers in the Faculty of Natural Sciences in order to form conclusions and make recommendations. Of course, nothing came of his efforts, but I credit him with doing valid research as a social scientist. Not only was it valid, it was needed and required courage.
This leads me to believe that, whether they say it or not, the underlying reason for the UG staff and students to protest at this time is that they have lost a voice on the Council that can genuinely represent them while they made do with life on campus. As far as I am concerned the outcomes of Mr Kissoon’s daily researches were well packaged and delivered unabstrusely to thousands of appreciative students over the years, whether or not we necessarily agreed with some of his conclusions. This is literally the meaning of a professor. UG did well to provide a place where what he professed could be discussed and disputed.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai
