Dear Claudienne,

I am a recent retiree from the education sector. I have been lecturing various courses at the International University of the Caribbean (IUC) for several years on a part-time basis. It has become a practice for the institution to use lecturers of the highest calibre to deliver courses to students and to withhold our salaries for long periods of time. I am owed for two courses and a teaching-practice supervision which were all done over the past year.

I am owed approximately $185,000: $85,000 for having taught one course, $85,000 for having taught another course, and $15,000 for having served as external examiner for teaching practice exercises that required travelling expenses with my private motor vehicle.

I have called on numerous occasions and managed finally some months ago to speak with the person responsible for paying salaries to lecturers islandwide.She paid me a fraction of what I was owed, but did not indicate when the rest would be forthcoming.

I am going through a period where I have stopped receiving a salary from my former full-time job as I have retired. I understand that my gratuity and pension will become available in about another six months. In the meantime I could make even one of my monthly commitments if IUC would pay up what they owe me.

Your kind assistance would be greatly appreciated.

DL

Dear DL,

Tell Claudienne spoke with the president of the International University of the Caribbean (IUC) and he admitted that they were having financial difficulties.

Since our discussion with him, we note that you were contacted by the president who promised to pay you $80,000. We also note that you have received the $80,000 in two parts, of which $40,000 was via a post-dated cheque.

However, there appears to be a misunderstanding between yourself and IUC over the $100,000 that you claim is still owed to you.

The president told

Tell Claudienne that the IUC records showed that you had been paid for all the lectures you did between 2011-2014 when you worked with the university.

You said that in your conversation with the president he told you that the IUC records showed that you had already been paid the additional $100,000 which you were claiming for the course. You said that you asked him to produce proof of this, but the documents that IUC sent to you were not relevant.

“I looked up my records at home and found that the records IUC sent me were for a previous year and not the current year I was claiming for,” you said.

You insist that you are still owed $100,000 and told us that to substantiate your claim, you have sent documents to IUC for the current year (2015) which you are claiming for. You said that since you sent IUC the documents to support your claim, they have not responded.

You also said that you have stopped lecturing at the university.

We asked the president on Thursday to comment on your allegation that you had received no response from IUC since you sent them the documents to substantiate your claim for $100,000 for the lecture(s) done in 2015. The president said that he was not informed that you had sent such documents to IUC.

However, he told

Tell Claudienne that if he found evidence that you had in fact done the lecture(s), you would be paid.

After we spoke, the president did some checks and found the letter and documents you had sent to IUC to back up your

$100,000 claim. He promised

Tell Claudienne that he would phone you to apologise.

The president of IUC told

Tell Claudienne that the university was founded by the United Church in Jamaica and Grand Cayman. He pointed out that despite the financial difficulties of the university, the United Church had impacted education significantly.

Giving the background to the nearly 200 years of involvement of the United Church in education in Jamaica, the president highlighted the church’s support at the early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary levels. He named the following institutions in which the church played a formative role: St Andrew High School, Camperdown High School, Meadowbrook High School, Clarendon College and Carron Hall High School.

The IUC, he said, has regional campuses, community campuses and delivery centres covering the majority of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

Please let us know the outcome of the president’s promised phone call.

We wish you all the best.

We wish you all the best.

Have a problem with a store, utility, a company? Telephone 936-9436 or write to: Tell Claudienne c/o Sunday Finance, Jamaica Observer, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5; or e-mail:edwardsc@jamaicaobserver.com. Please include a contact phone number.