UWI snubs House
MPs push for reforms to make university answerable to Jamaican Parliament
JAMAICA’S ELECTED representatives, smarting from being snubbed by the University of the West Indies (UWI), now say that they will be pushing for necessary changes to ensure that the university, which, this year alone, is set to get funding that could cover two government ministries, is answerable to the Parliament.
Representatives of the university, which has a campus in Jamaica (Mona), the University of Technology, and the University Council of Jamaica were invited to appear yesterday before Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) to explain how they have been spending taxpayers’ money.
Section 73A of the Standing Orders, which govern the rules of the House of Representatives, empowers the PAAC to monitor government expenditure.
However, members were left stunned when the committee chairman, Dr WyKenham McNeill, read a letter from the university’s registrar, William Iton, which made it clear that the UWI had no legal obligation to appear before the Jamaican Parliament.
“Please be advised that the UWI is a public autonomous regional educational institution which serves 17 countries in the Caribbean,” Iton said in the letter dated October 10 to Dr Maurice Smith, permanent secretary in the education ministry.
“The university was established by (British) Royal Charter in 1962. The university therefore has to be distinguished from other agencies of your ministry,” the letter continued.
The royal charter makes the institution only legally answerable
to the British monarchy, identified as the ‘visitor’, or its representatives.
Iton’s letter said as a contributor to the university, Jamaica was “entitled” to information and recommended that the Government use its representative on the university’s finance committee “to request the necessary information”.
Professor Archibald McDonald, principal of the Mona campus, told The Gleaner yesterday that each CARICOM contributing country has representatives on the finance committee, which is a subcommittee of the university council – the UWI’s highest decision-making body – which also has government representatives.
He said there was no formal reporting requirement from CARICOM, which lists the UWI as one of its “associate institutions”.
The university had submitted a report, signalling its intent to appear before the committee, but according to Smith, the university withdrew and submitted an opinion it said it received from the attorney general’s chambers in 2007, which affirmed its legal independence.
Questions to the Office of the Vice-Chancellor, headed by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, were not answered up to press time.
SITUATION UNACCEPTABLE
In a May research paper, the library of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, similar to the Senate in Jamaica, noted that “royal charters and the affairs of chartered bodies are not generally debated in Parliament”.
McNeill said the Jamaican situation is unacceptable and his committee would be recommending that Parliament consider the issue with the aim of starting to ensure that Parliament could do its job as an oversight body for public funds.
“It’s not that we’re casting any aspersions on the UWI. Any expenditure made out of public funds must have scrutiny. You must understand how it is spent and for what it is spent,” he argued.
Continuing, he said: “Where the systems are in place, our job is to ensure that those systems are followed, and where we find a system where there is a deficiency, say in this case, then we have to move to adjust it and to agree to it. The one thing I can be certain of is that we will put in place the necessary mechanisms to ensure openness and transparency.”