Foreign students at the University of Guyana yesterday barricaded and chained the Turkeyen campus’s gates as they demanded resumption of their classes.
The small group, which included over 20 students from Barbados, Belize and Jamaica, stood behind their barricades and refused to unlock the gates despite several orders from a team of police officers. The protest which began around 8.30 am lasted until 11 am. Afterwards, the campus was a ghost town and the protesting students were seen sitting at the gates, guarding them with their barricades in place.
Placards which hung on the gates of the campus, stated “Come for our votes,” and “They can’t arrest us all”.
This is the fifth week of industrial action which began when staffers at the university staged a sit-in for an increase in salaries. The strike and ensuing protests followed the collapse of negotiations between the administration and the unions.
The workers unions are demanding a 60% increase across the board, along with the rescinding of a workload allocation policy being thrust upon upon them by Vice Chancellor Jacob Opadeyi.
The administration had offered a 5% increase but this was rejected by the unions and it was subsequently withdrawn with Opadeyi stating that there would be no further negotiations until the staff returned to work.
The students have stated that they were the ones suffering from the shutdown; they bemoaned the fact that their fees were paid and all they were doing was waiting on the administration and the unions to come to some sort of compromise. The foreign students are also asking Caricom heads to look into and help resolve the issue.
A Belizean student, Glenfield Dennison, who is studying law at the university, said they will continue their “own strike actions” until the unions and the administration reach an agreement that would see a resumption of lectures.
“If they want to arrest us then they could arrest all of us,” Dennison said.
“There are several persons who are willing to be arrested, including myself. We are doing nothing wrong, except demanding our right to an education.”
Dennison further stated that law students, in particular, were affected the most because final year students have already sent their applications to Hugh Wooding Law School and are therefore reliant on the conclusion of their degree programme to send out transcripts.
He stated that the police had instructed them to remove the chains from gates and they had initially obliged but “that wasn’t what they wanted us to do really.
The problem was not the chains. They wanted the barricade to be removed and the gates opened.”
This the students refused to do and after a while, the chains were replaced on the gates.
UGWU President Bruce Haynes stated that staff were also there to support the students. However, he stated that lecturers who choose to continue to teach during the industrial action are the ones who “put self-interest above general change.”
