The University of Guyana (UG) is officially without a Vice Chancellor as the contract of Professor James Rose has come to an end and a substantive replacement has not been found.
Further, since the position of Deputy Vice Chancellor was also vacant since the last academic year there is now no one to fill the acting Vice Chancellor post.
When this newspaper telephoned the Office of the Vice Chancellor on Tuesday and requested to speak with Dr Rose, the secretary informed that he was not at work and stated too that his contract had come to an end at the end of September.
A source told Stabroek News that Rose had not applied for his contract to be renewed, and the search committee appointed by the university’s council could not continue its work of searching for a suitable applicant after the life of the council had expired.
This newspaper was also told that Rose had made a submission for a Deputy Vice Chancellor to be appointed at the beginning of the last academic year but no one was designated.
“Naturally this would have been the person to act in Rose’s absence now that his contract has come to an end but there is now no one,” the source explained.
Numerous efforts by Stabroek News to contact chairman of the council Dr. Prem Misir, who is also the university’s Pro-Chancellor, for comment also continue to prove futile.
A source close to the search committee had told Stabroek News that several professors with impressive resumes had applied for the post, some of them from as far away as India.
The source explained that while the curriculum vitae of each of the persons had particularly impressed members of the search committee, no moves had been made to short-list them.
The UG Students Society (UGSS) and the UG Workers Union (UGWU) in a letter to the media as well as the parliamentary opposition parties had contended that the Office of the President had intervened before the search committee had completed its work and had ordered that the contract of Dr Rose, the current VC, be renewed.
The letter had been circulated by UGSS President Damian La Rose; Jason Benjamin, a member of the search committee; and UGWU representative on the committee, Frederick Kissoon, to the media and opposition political parties.
They maintained that after the University of Guyana Council had set up the search committee, the incumbent Dr Rose had not applied for contract renewal.
Since then the Alliance For Change and the People’s National Congress Reform have voiced their disapproval at the way the government has handled the matter.