UG Council accepts Prof. Samad’s resignation

Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 21:01 by GxMedia

The University of Guyana (UG) is to advertise for a new Director of its Tain Campus, all but scuttling hopes of a return by Professor Daizal Samad.

The professor submitted his resignation early last month at is expected to take effect from October 4. He is reported as saying that relations between him and officials at the Turkeyen campus have broken down and that all authority has been stripped from the Tain campus officials.

He accused officials at Turkeyen of wanting to run the day to day operations of the Berbice campus.

Samad has said that he would only remain if the UG Berbice Campus became fully autonomous from Turkeyen or the University of Berbice was established.

“The Council has accepted his resignation. What we have to do is set about advertising as we did for the post of Vice Chancellor; we’re going to advertise for the position and then we’re going to go through a process,” UG Council member Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine told reporters on Friday.

He noted that there were issues that were highlighted that needed to be resolved to which end the Council had established a special committee to look at the relationship between the two campuses.

However, Dr. Roopnaraine said the body would only be addressing the systemic issues.

“Professor Samad’s complaints were of two kinds; there were complaints that I regard as personal, having to do with what Professor Samad saw as highly negative attacks on him personally and what made his life difficult as administrator of the Berbice campus.

And then there are the systemic issues which have to do with autonomy and how much autonomy it should have and how you work out a proper relationship between the two campuses, I would say the Council is (concentrating) on the latter.”

Professor Samad, who became Director in 2008, was in April retained for another three years.