BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Aug 15, CMC – The Clement Payne Movement (CPM) Thursday called for a referendum on free university education after the Barbados government earlier this week announced that it will no longer pay tuition fees for nationals studying at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

In a statement, CPM president David Comissiong said no government has the right to “dismantle the Barbadian system of free university education at UWI without first obtaining the approval of the Barbadian people through a national vote in a referendum”.

Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Chris Sinckler in his 2013-14 budget presentation on Tuesday, said that effective 2014, Barbadian students pursuing studies at the university’s three campuses will be required to pay their own tuition fees, while the government continues to fund economic costs.

Sinckler said the tuition fees range from BDS$5, 625 to BDS$65,000 (One Barbados dollar=US$0.50 cents) and that the new policy would reduce the transfer to UWI by an estimated BDS$42 million a year.

“The government of Barbados recognizes that access to education at all levels has been a key factor in the success of Barbados as a society and an economy,” Sinckler said, adding that the Freundel Stuart administration “remains committed to, and fully supportive of, the continued growth and development of UWI Cave Hill and increased access to tertiary education for Barbadians”.

But Comissiong said that the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) administration was “totally out of place” when it made the announcement “because the system of free university education at the UWI is one of the fundamental pillars of the very structure of the Barbadian nation”.

He said no mandate had been given to the government by the Barbadian public “to make such a fundamental change to the very structure of our nation.

“Barbados has just gone through a General Election, and at no time during the course of that Election campaign did the Democratic Labour Party indicate to the Barbadian people that they were proposing to institute such a fundamental change to the structure of our nation.