CASTRIES, St. Lucia (CMC):

Education Minister Arsen James says the current difficulties being encountered by St. Lucian students attending the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) will make government here more determined to set up a local university.

St. Augustine students recently received notices that residence hall fees were being immediately increased by 30 per cent, a move the St. Lucian students said would bring severe hardship a accommodation off campus was even costlier and they were on fixed students loans which covered the old fees.

James said while government had written the Trinidad authorities appealing to them to make some concessions and withdraw the new fees, it could not make any demands on the UWI, "whose priority is obviously Trinidadian".