Minister of Education says UB President has it wrong

Carey Fraser

It still remains unclear whether or not Doctor Carey Fraser, President of the University of Belize was put on leave by the Board of Trustees or he proceeded on his own. Fraser has been at odds with the Board claiming that the board has been micromanaging the institution. In a letter written to the Prime Minister, the President said that he will be leaving UB at the end of the academic year, in June 2014. While Fraser has not said much on his status, the Minister of Education, Patrick Faber says that not all that Fraser claimed in his letter to the prime minister is accurate. According to the minister, if Fraser isn’t competent to run the university, there are other persons who can.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

Patrick Faber

“I don’t interfere in the affairs of UB too much. I appoint a very competent board with the chairman as my representative. It is not that because he is my representative—he is the chairman, he has been elected from among the membership there. And I try to leave matters of the university to the board. I have received a copy of the letter that Doctor Fraser, who is the current president, wrote to the Prime Minister and I did make comments on the media yesterday on some of the charges made by the president in that letter because it spoke to the ministry of education. In the letter, and again the letter was to the prime minister—it was only copied to me and I believe the media has gotten a hold of that letter. In that letter, he speaks about the ministry of education not being committed to fulfilling its debt payments to the university which I reject out of hand. The ministry, as all Belizeans are aware, had that bill because of the fee payments that were taken on in 2006. We went to great lengths to explain how this came about earlier this year when we stopped this subsidized fee payment for the incoming students. Those who are already enrolled, continue to receive that for a fair amount of time until they are finished. And so Belizeans would know that we have taken measures to deal with that debt at UB. I am told that the debt has been brought down from about four and half million to about two point something million. So for the president to say that there is no effort in that regard is completely flawed. In fact my ministry has been able to provide me with the figures to show the contributions that have been made to the university including a ten million dollar subvention. We are giving in any given year on average, thirteen to fourteen million tax paying dollars to the University of Belize. This is major. So that if the president says that this is one of the major reasons why he is not able to continue as the president, I say that that is bogus. I make no apologies for that.  The board of the university may have taken some measures—maybe you know more than I do William in terms of him being put on leave or he being asked to be put on leave—I am not certain, I am not briefed on that. But I am sure that if the president is unable to perform in his duties for whatever reason that there is competent people at the university like yourself who can team together and hold things together until we are able to work the matter out or until we are able to find a new president.”

Fraser has requested a meeting with the Prime Minister, but Faber says that before that happens, as minister, he will be meeting with the P.M. Barrow.