Government bursaries for study at the University of the West Indies (UWI) are still being processed, according to Minister of Education Ronald Jones.
He made the disclosure in a wide-ranging presentation to yesterday’s meeting of the St James South constituency branch of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in Wanstead Terrace.
He said it was “sad” that the processing of the 1 695 applications for bursaries “took a while” but the media should not “beat me to the ground” because the system was not moving as rapidly as they would have liked.
“We’ve been working reasonably well with the University of the West Indies, particularly at Cave Hill, to make sure that once [requests] are in and we have identified the name and they’re going to benefit from the bursary, this person will get a bursary,” he said.
“Why are you running me down when you see me, [asking] when they going to get the bursary?” he asked the media.
The Barbados Government last year announced that it would stop paying tuition fees for its nationals attending UWI but Jones had said Government would provide an estimated 3 000 bursaries to help students attend the tertiary institution. (TY)