SCORES of university students yesterday staged a protest near Gordon House over the Government’s decision to cut the subsidy to tertiary institutions. The placard-bearing students, who gathered at the corner of Duke and Sutton streets, accused the Bruce Golding-led administration of lying when it said there would be a “nominal freeze” on the annual subsidy to these institutions rather than a cut.

Yesterday’s demonstrators were drawn from the University of the West Indies (UWI), University of Technology (UTech) and the Mico University College.

“Tertiary institutions will now have to find that (the amount in subsidies that was cut) out of their pockets, which means that the tuition is going to increase significantly for students,” said a vocal Krystal Tomlinson, a representative of the UWI Guild of Students.

She branded the Government a liar.

The UWI’s subsidy has been cut by more than a billion dollars and the students fear that they will be asked to make up this shortfall. As such, they are anticipating school fees to be increased by as much as 25 per cent in some instances.

According to Tomlinson, the main objective of the protest was to bring to the public’s attention the fact that every sector — from early childhood to tertiary — had been affected by a cut in the budget of the Ministry of Education.