UTT chairman steps in to end financial abuse; student had $3.3M scholarship

UTT Chairman Curtis Manchoon 

The chairman of the University of Trinidad & Tobago, Curtis Manchoon, has terminated several contracts at the institution.

The decision was made after a forensic audit ordered by Attorney General Anand Ramlogan unearthed a multimillion-dollar scam among its staff and students.

Manchoon told the Sunday Guardian UTT's books showed huge losses with no benefits in return. There was a $67 million deficit in 2011, he said, with operating expenses reaching more than $400 million. And Manchoon does not expect the university to balance its books any time soon.

The chairman told the Guardian some UTT workers don't not know what they are doing, while others had outside jobs.

"What I discovered was that people could come to work when they want and go when they want," he said, adding that "nobody would ask them anything."

He said, "They did not want their work time recorded. We attempted through the HR manager to curtail that. There was huge resistance. The sense you get is everybody protecting one another.”

Manchoon is a former accountant with Pricewaterhouse Coopers. He said in his opinion people saw UTT as a "milking cow". The university operates nine campuses and has a staff of over 1,200. Its student population is about 8,000.

He told the Guardian, "It is up to this board to clean up this horrendous mess and put in place a proper accounting system." He explained that much of the problems at the university have been inherited from the previous Manning PNM administration.

"As a matter of fact, one of the things I discovered as chairman was that UTT was actually paying students $85,000 each year to do their master’s and PhD under the Gate programme, which provides 100 per cent cost to the students...but only 50 per cent at the master’s and PhD levels.”

Manchoon said the board did not sanction the payments.

He explained that an undergraduate who worked in a private enterprise for $12,000 salary was hired at UTT for $36,000.

The Guardian also published some highlights of the audit:

• One staff member was paid $40,000 a month for three years and was never seen in UTT. This amounted to approximately $1.5 million in wages
• More than 50 per cent of 130 high-performing athlete students on scholarship dropped out. The students, representing 12 sporting disciplines, fell under the High Performance Sports Unit. This programme cost taxpayers $100 million each year to manage, with housing, meals and transportation provided. They also used the vehicles provided to visit nightclubs
• A lecturer collected a salary of close to $100,000
• An expatriate of India, who came to teach music, had no students in his class for three years. The teacher was also provided with a housing allowance
• One student was awarded a staggering $3.3 million scholarship