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  • 10 months ago
While hundreds of UWI staff were protesting for better wages, the UWI Council was presenting the University's 2023-2024 annual report with deficits as the underlying theme, despite making significant inroads in the research department. Rynessa Cutting has more
Transcript
00:00The University of the West Indies continues to face financial restraints
00:05which are reportedly getting tighter with each passing year. We've all had
00:10to endure cuts in our budget, we're down like about 50% from the good old days
00:16three years ago and so we continue to have quite a bit of receivables
00:24as well and we're working hard to try to overcome that but nevertheless this is
00:29one of the reasons which has propelled us to move forward to improve our
00:34sustainability and rare regeneration efforts. As at 2024 money's owed to the
00:40UAE by the various governments totals in excess of 501 million dollars. Meantime
00:47the University is also feeling the pinch with respect to its international
00:51funding following US President Donald Trump's decision to shut down USAID. The
00:57situation with USAID has been particularly impactful. At the moment
01:03the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research is about to submit to me a report that
01:15quantifies the measure of exposure. There are many research projects in this
01:22University that are funded by USAID and some of those have been frozen and with
01:31with immediate impact. But the Vice-Chancellor says the UAE continues to
01:36do the needful to ensure that it can support its own endeavors through its
01:41research initiatives. In the last four to five years we have raised about a hundred
01:48million US dollars. We have raised about a hundred million US dollars through
01:54faculty and other university-based initiatives to drive the research. The
02:02Vice-Chancellor further notes that the University's global ranking is dependent
02:07on the quality of its research as he highlighted a pioneering project out of
02:12the Caveville campus. The Caveville campus have just launched a vehicle
02:17fueled by oil derived from sargassum and it's wonderful to see this car driving
02:24around Barbados on sargassum oil and that came out of the faculty. So they're
02:32now looking to find a way to commercialize this. Here at home history
02:36stands to be made with some novel innovation in the medical field. We've
02:41also importantly filed four new patents last year including some very exciting
02:47areas such as antibiotic resistance. I think the team from FST, again I believe
02:52it's a multidisciplinary team, I know Prof Ramse Baag leans it, I believe they feel
02:58that we feel that we may actually have the cure for this growing phenomenon in
03:04the world where persons resisting antibiotics, their bodies have become
03:09accustomed to it. So that's what that patent is about and hopefully we'll find
03:13a billionaire who can invest in us bringing out a pharmaceutical very soon.
03:18The University of the West Indies St. Augustine has secured over 200 million
03:24dollars in research funding to the tune of 225.8 million dollars. But don't jump
03:32to high media and say that we are full of money because when you have research
03:37funding, unfortunately I always lament, you cannot use it to fix a roof or mow a
03:43lawn. It is restricted funding, it is only for the research.
03:47Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
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