CMU strips wall of fame after parents express concern
THE CARIBBEAN Maritime University (CMU) has moved swiftly to address concerns raised by parents about the names of two booted Cabinet ministers among persons on a wall of fame at the Palisadoes Park-based institution in Kingston.
The concerns were highlighted in a Gleaner story last Friday in which a parent of a prospective student expressed shock at seeing former Cabinet ministers Dr Andrew Wheatley and Ruel Reid among honourees on the wall during a recent tour of the institution.
Wheatley, the former energy minister, was forced to quit the Cabinet last July after agencies under the ministry he led were swamped with allegations of corruption, nepotism, financial impropriety, and questionable human relations practices. Reid, the discarded education minister now under criminal investigation, made his exit in March amid corruption allegations dogging agencies under his ministry, including the CMU.
“That was the last thing I expected to see,” the parent told The Gleaner last week. “In light of all the developments, what is the rationale for these people to be listed on a wall of fame? ... Are we saying to the children that they should aspire to walk in the footsteps of these people?”
The parent, whose child will begin studies at the CMU in a few weeks, said she and others who were taken aback by the discovery would be pressing the institution’s management to have the names removed.
However, hours after the story was published, the CMU’s university council ordered that the 16 tiles on the wall of fame be dismounted “until further notice”, a CMU release said yesterday.
According to CMU, the directive was communicated to the university administration
in a letter on Friday and executed that afternoon.
The wall of fame in question is mounted on the newly constructed PetroCaribe Building of the Festo Authorised and Certified Training (FACT) Centre for Mechatronics and Automation. Opened last September, the state-of-the-art facility, which aims to deliver international certification in industrial automation and mechatronics, is the result of a partnership between the CMU and globally renowned German training institute Festo Didactic.
The centre has the capacity to train and certify more than 4,000 students annually.
The PetroCaribe Development Fund provided $402 million of the more than $750 million spent on the facility.
In May, the CMU removed Wheatley’s name from a centre named in his honour at its main campus following public backlash as details surfaced about alleged impropriety at a number of agencies under the ministry, including NESoL, Petrojam, and the Universal Service Fund.