Latest update November 8th, 2024 1:00 AM
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Caricom Heads advocate for continued Hugh Wooding placements for UG students
Despite prevailing concerns, the top 25 graduating law students of the University of Guyana (UG) are expected to be granted access to the Hugh Wooding Law School this year.
Attorney General,
Basil Williams
This decision was one made at the recently concluded 36th Caricom Heads of Government meeting in Barbados.
The automatic entry allowance for the local law students has been one that has been fraught with uncertainty in recent years.
For the past few years Guyana has been forced to fight relentlessly for placement of its top performing students at the Hugh Wooding Law School, a situation that had its genesis when the Council for Legal Education (CLE) suspended the Hugh Wooding Law School and UG’s special arrangement for automatic placement for 25 of its (UG’s) top performing students.
However, the need for a permanent solution as it relates to the automatic placement of UG students at the Hugh Wooding Law School is one that the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister, Basil Williams, is hoping to realise soon. And based on information out of the AG’s Chambers, Williams, as part of his plan to address this issue, has proposed a meeting to be convened shortly with the UG law students.
He, nevertheless, spearheaded the proactive tactic that allowed for the issue, though short-term, to be addressed at the recent Heads of Government conference.
While the Attorney General did not attend the conference held in Barbados, he took a decision to contact the Guyana delegation there, headed by President David Granger, to amend Guyana’s agenda to include the automatic entry of the top 25 UG law graduates to the Hugh Wooding Law School for 2015.
Williams in his request asked that Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Greenidge, who attended the conference, seek an agreement with the Caricom Heads to continue the interim arrangements made at their Intercessional Meeting in 2013.
At that meeting it was decided that the 25 top UG Law graduates would be allowed automatic entry to the Hugh Wooding Law School for 2014, pending the conclusion of another Collaborative Agreement between UG, the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the Council for Legal Education (CLE), and the completion of a study and submission of a report on the status of Legal Education in the Caricom Region.
This move to have the Guyana delegation raise the matter at the meeting came on the heels of a meeting the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister held in his Chambers on Thursday last with UG’s Law Department Head, Sheldon McDonald; Former UG Registrar, Vincent Alexander and President of the Bar Association, Christopher Ram.
The meeting was one that represented a commitment from Williams to urgently discuss the automatic entry issue with the UG administration. Based on the outcome of the Caricom Heads meeting, Williams’ proactive intervention yielded a satisfactory outcome.
A statement out of the Attorney General’s office revealed that “Caricom Heads at the just concluded 36th Heads of Government Conference in Barbados, called on the Hugh Wooding Law School to continue to make provisions for the automatic entry of the top 25 Guyanese University of Guyana (UG) law graduates.”
Even as he lauded the decision by the CARICOM Heads to continue with the interim agreement in allowing the automatic entry of the UG graduates to the Hugh Wooding Law School for 2015, the AG was also in high praise for the team effort of the Foreign Affairs Minister to firmly state Guyana’s case, thereby gaining support from the Caricom Heads.
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