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Accommodation
crisis threatens students' livelihoods
Students Solidarity Trust
Extracted from September Newsletter
October
03, 2007
Zimbabwe's institutions
of higher learning are faced with acute accommodation shortages
that are threatening the very fabric of education in Zimbabwe. The
University of Zimbabwe students are faced with an even more precarious
predicament.
University
of Zimbabwe
The failure
of the University
of Zimbabwe administration to accede to the demands by student
to reopen the halls of residence has left students in a quagmire.
Students at the campus
are now faced with the grim reality of commuting on a daily basis
to campus. The transport costs have since increased extra-ordinarily
since the government's prize war collapsed dramatically.
A snap survey
carried out by Zimbabwe
National Students' Union (ZINASU) has revealed that some
students are now affording to come to College just twice a week,
whilst some have to walk to College from town and back. Yet still
some have to commute from places as far away as Chegutu and Marondera.
Some students are sleeping
at the Railway Station.
The University of Zimbabwe
administration has a humanitarian obligation to accede to the demands
of the students whose souls are currently tormented and troubled.
The assertion that the city health department rendered the halls
of residence inhabitable does not stand.
In as much as some toilets
are not functional, however, some of the toilets are functional,
particularly those of Car Saunders Hostel, newly (2006) renovated
Manfred Hodson Hall, Swinton Hall and New Complex 4. In total, 336
toilet cistern tanks need to be repaired.
Yet the repairing of
these toilets could have been simply done during the last vacation
if the UZ administration had the will to do so. The UZ administration
has the capacity, even within the alleged maladministration context
leveled against it, to raise funds for such repairs through such
revenue generating projects such as researches, UZ farm, short computer
courses, Institute of Development Studies, Centre for Applied Social
Sciences and various sports facilities.
Mutare
Polytechnic
The denial of accommodation
to students as a tool for victimization is an emerging potent tool
of stifling students' rights to free assembly and speech.
Student activists who
the administration suspects to have links with the Zimbabwe National
Students' Union (ZINASU) are being systematically denied access
to halls of residence.
Visit the Students
Solidarity Trust fact
sheet
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