THE matter in the Kaieteur News article “Freddie Kissoon, Henry Jeffrey believed targets at UG” (KN October 19) has a history which the article did not explore
The current Vice-Chancellor (VC) began his tenure around April 2009 and soon after Mr. Vincent Alexander (then a senior member and activist of the PNCR) became Registrar, and adviser to the VC.  This “New UG Administration” soon began to get rid of lecturers especially those over 60 years.  After three years the pattern of getting rid of lecturers whose contracts were not renewed or interpreted in a negative way shows they were from a particular group.  Lecturers from another particular group were kept on even though they had lesser academic and teaching experience, and were older than lecturers of the other group. Dr. Henry Jeffrey, for example, is over 65 years of age.
The above cited discrimination was/is so glaring and obvious that the matter was brought to the attention of some members of the UG Council which has the” last word” on hiring. Some of them investigated the complaints which led to the Council seeking termination of the contracts of some lecturers.  If the contracts under the VC’s signature are valid, the University, if it so wishes, can still terminate contracts of lecturers at specified times of the academic year after giving notice. This is a term of the lecturers’ ‘contracts.
The criticism of the UG Council vetting the applications at this late stage (“nine weeks into the semester”) is misplaced.  Applications for teaching positions closed in January, 2011.  The VC made his decision around the last week in August, about a week before the beginning of the current academic year and eight months after the application deadline.  Was this deliberately done to shut out the UG Council’s deliberation on this matter?  It did not take this long to process teaching applications under the previous VC.  Also, under the previous VC, UG Council meetings were held every month; the current VC changed it to once every three months which is the reason why the UG Council had to ask for an extraordinary meeting of the UG Council.
Students do not need to suffer as there are lecturers now who can replace those lecturers whose contracts were/will be terminated, but it is not going to happen; what really matters is the politics of the “New UG Administration”.  Also, students registered for programmes which carried certain courses only to find out the University has dropped some of these courses to save money and not because it cannot find lecturers.  This is a violation of the University’s contract with students. The President of the Students’ Society should also be concerned about this matter.
The University has been so mismanaged by the “New UG Administration” that the Head of a Department has taken the VC twice to court on two different matters.