Intolerable parking conditions for UWI students

THE EDITOR: Thank you for allowing me to write you with respect to the new parking plan at the University of the West Indies. This letter is directed to anyone in UWI that can help. This year the university has enrolled hundreds of new students making the student population rise to above 13,000. As a result, there was a need to have a new parking plan to accommodate everyone. However, paying students seem to have gotten the rough end of the deal. Students are now required to park in an area off campus between 6 am and 6 pm. This requirement is acceptable except for the following problems:

•The car park is (was) a grassy area. As a result, when it is rainy it is extremely muddy — not a pleasant situation for people’s cars or their shoes/socks/pants. In addition, when the weather is dry, the area is quite dusty.
•The student shuttle does not provide transportation to every destination. Some students are thus required to walk to classes along University Drive which is an impediment to drivers and unsafe for pedestrians. This is espeacially true for students who have classes that start before 6 pm and end well after 6 pm when it is dark.

Here are some suggestions:
•Please pave the car park as soon as possible. As far as I know this is a requirement for any decent car park worldwide.
•Please provide a well-lit walkway along University Drive and a gateway at the southern end of the car park.
•Many times the car parks on campus between 6 am and 6 pm do have a good number of parking spaces that are empty (many people leave campus way before 6 pm).

Allow students to park on campus so long as parking spaces are available and if they are not available then they can use the external car park. The improvements should include, but not be limited to the above suggestions. Do remember that the “customer” (ie the student) is number one. Students pay a lot of money to attend classes at UWI. Please be nice to them.

JOHN MCINTYRE
Concerned Student
Tunapuna