USP saga continues with more experienced staff leaving
Morgan Wairiu, is one of the Pacific’s leading academics. A Solomon Islander, he has worked at the University of the South Pacific, based in Fiji, for the past six years.
He was the Deputy Director of the University’s Pacific Centre for Sustainable Development and was the Acting Director last year. Mr Wairiu’s standing as a researcher on climate change and its effects has been internationally recognised.
In 2018, he was a lead author of the highly influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report that set out the planetary impacts, of global warming and the need for sustainable development to eradicate poverty.
He has brought credit and esteem to USP as a home-grown scientific leader.
And yet he has just left USP to return to the Solomon Islands even though he has no position to go to. Why would such an outstanding scientific leader leave USP?
USP Vice Chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia in an email to all staff claimed that the academic had resigned “to take up a new position”. But Mr Wairiu has issued his own statement to all staff to “correct a false statement made by Professor Ahluwalia”.
Worrying trend
The decision of leading the Pacific Island staff to leave USP is very worrying for the future of USP. Besides Mr Wairiu, a second Solomon Islander and scientific leader has declined to accept a one-year extension of their contract at USP, reportedly following concerns about treatment.
Other key Pacific Island staff who had left the university, were reportedly fed-up with the treatment of locals by the Vice Chancellor.
Still more are being forced out when their contracts are not renewed.
Professor Ahluwalia’s vision for USP seems not to involve the Pacific Island staff members who have invested much of their lives in the institution.
An increasing number of regional staff members at the university have had enough of their treatment.
Up until now, the University Council has supported the Vice Chancellor but isn’t it time that the council started to take seriously the complaints of Pacific Island staff ? An independent investigation of the many complaints that have been made about Professor Ahluwalia and his supporters is needed to get to the bottom of what is really happening at USP.
Yet, the council has refused to even look at the evidence in support of these complaints, as if they are all the concoction of two men – Winston Thompson and Mahmood Khan.
The reality is very different as many on the inside at USP well know.
The investigators need to talk to those staff, and ex-staff, whose voices have been silenced or marginalised by the Vice Chancellor and his supporters in the university and on the council.
Up until now, the truth about what is happening has not come out.
For whatever reason the council has chosen to ignore the evidence of what is really going on.
If USP is to recover from the crisis that it now faces, a truly independent investigation must take place.
In 2018, Mr Wairiu was a lead author of the highly influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report that set out the planetary impacts, global warming and the need for sustainable development to eradicate poverty.