The National Assembly on Monday night approved $17.9 million to assist Guyanese law students attending the Trinidad and Tobago-based Hugh Wooding Law School over the next two years, but government was unable to immediately say how much each student will now have to pay.
This sum was part of $2 billion in extra-budgetary funds used by government to meet a variety of needs.
According to the request which came from the Ministry of Legal Affairs/Attorney General’s Chambers, this sum represents payment as contribution towards increased tuition fees for Guyanese law students attending the law school for academic years 2016-2018. The contribution, the National Assembly was told, “represents 25 per cent of the economic cost of tuition fees for 50 students.”
Attorney General Basil Williams, responding to questions from PPP/C MP Anil Nandlall, said the annual tuition for one student is $2,830,130. He said the economic cost for each student is $358,000.
Nandlall said that what Williams was telling the House was clearly incorrect. “That’s not right,” he continuously muttered. He was told that he is to ask question and responses would be given.
According to the Speaker, this was not the time and place to test the accuracy of the answer provided.
The Attorney General continued to provide information, but it was clear that Nandlall, who held that post under the former government, did not agree with what was being said.
Williams later promised that he would do the necessary calculations to determine how much each Guyanese student will now have to pay and forward same to Nandlall.
Panic set in for Guyanese students last year after Hugh Wooding, without prior notice, announced a more than 30% increase in its tuition fees as well as changes in its payment scheme which would require prospective and continuing students to pay 100% of their fees at the beginning of the school year. Guyanese students now have to pay $5.8 million (TT$182,028) for the two-year programme to obtain their Legal Education Certificate (LEC) from the law school.
They previously paid $4.2 million (TT$131,400) for the two-year programme.
Williams, in an interview with Stabroek News shortly after the announcement was made, had explained that in 2002 the former government stopped paying any contributions to the economic cost for the students attending Hugh Wooding.
“That means that from that time up to the time that we came into office, anyone who wanted to study law knew that they had to have the money and couldn’t look to the government for any help…,” he said, adding that when the present government took up office it was discovered that there was no automatic entry for UG students to Hugh Wooding and as a result the intervention of the Caricom heads of government had to be sought. He made it clear that it was never disclosed by the previous government, “that you need to negotiate again the question of the automatic entry of the 25 Guyanese students to the law school. So we had to make that happen, which we were able to do when we asked the President and the Foreign Minister to intervene in the matter.”
Williams told Stabroek News that the issue of automatic entry is tied up with the question of the collaborative agreement between UG, UWI and the Council of Legal Education. A new draft with proposals was presented at a council meeting held in August last year.
There are two categories of Guyanese students; the first being the 25 who automatically gain places and the second relates to students who would have written an entrance exam.
