UWI eyes $100M in payroll savings from revitalising College Commons
Published:Thursday | April 11, 2024 | 12:06 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
In a bid to increase its revenue, The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus has commenced a project to revitalise its College Commons housing development that is expected to provide $100 million in payroll savings annually.
On Monday, during a contract signing between The UWI; Wentworth Construction and Consultants Limited; and Kayani Construction Limited, Milton Dennis, acting estate manager of the UWI Mona campus, confessed that, due to financial constraints, 44 of the university’s housing units were left in deplorable conditions for several years, causing them to remain vacant.
The College Commons community sits on approximately 60 acres of land consisting of 104 houses ranging from two-bedroom to four-bedroom units. It is a housing scheme operated by The UWI where eligible members of staff such as its lecturers, professors and senior administrative staff and their dependents can be accommodated.
Through this $78-million project, which commences this month, all the vacant properties will undergo total renovation inclusive of painting, woodwork, plumbing, electrical and tiling repairs, as well as upgrades to the kitchen and bathroom.
The project’s first phase will target 17 houses under a construction period of three months.
Kayani Construction Limited is responsible for eight houses while Wentworth Construction and Consultants Limited will be working on nine houses in the first phase.
By June, the units are expected to be handed over to members of staff, making way for phase two of the renovations to begin on the remaining 27 houses.
For his part, Professor Densil Williams, principal of The UWI, revealed that there was a higher demand for housing than what could be supplied by the university.
OVER 70 MEMBERS INTERESTED
Nearly 70 staff members have already expressed interest in wanting to acquire one of the 44 properties.
Williams stated that the projected $100 million return in revenue stems from the ability to house more of its staff, who receive a housing allowance equivalent to 40 per cent of their base pay as specified in their employment contracts.
Of this amount, 10 per cent is automatically added to the employee’s salary, and the remaining 30 per cent can be used to find housing of their choice or forfeited if the employee requests housing from the university.
“It’s a real saving to our payroll at about $100 million when the 44 [houses are] completed and that’s literal cash we have to find each month because it’s a part of the salaries,” Williams said, continuing however that “they want to live here and once they live here then we don’t have to find that”.
Williams further stated that the university aimed for College Commons to become “a place that persons aspire to live again”.
He said “the revitalisation project is really geared at bringing back the ‘familiness’ into our campus”.
On the issue of whether the university has considered making more use of the land by developing high-rise housing, Williams told journalists that this was a “bigger” and “longer-term project” that would require further discussions about how it could be facilitated.
He said it would call for a complete reconstruction of the College Commons community.
“Remember the land is not ours ... This is still government property, so it is not being vested in UWI as yet. So, we have to get that part through first and then we can come up with a bigger plan,” he added.
However, he projected that, by 2030, the university would be “seeing good, in terms of our cash reserves going into the positive from the negative to the tune of billions”.