After unrelenting pressure from the Opposition Barbados Labour Party and from the UWI student guild representatives, the Government of Barbados has at the eleventh hour announced that $1,800.00 will be granted to some UWI students during this academic year, which is already more than half way completed.

The DLP Government’s spasmodic handling of this whole episode has been a disaster and a fiasco. We in the BLP are convinced that means could have been found whereby the children of poor, unemployed and working class Barbadians could have continued to have their tuition fees fully funded by the Government, just as all of our present political leaders received free education.

This Government, starting with the Prime Minister, has lost touch with the common cause of our people. Those thousands of students who have already dropped out of the university are surely not those whose parents drive $150,000.00 vehicles, who live in stone houses and who carry their children to Disneyland.

Sadly, the lack of communication from the authorities to the public over the last five months and the failure of accountability to the student body has resulted in qualified Barbadians now being denied, perhaps forever in some cases, the chance to receive or complete a university education.