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Four students arrested at the National University of Science and
Technology
Zimbabwe
National Students Union (ZINASU)
(Mugwadi)
June 04, 2010
Four National
University of Science and Technology students were arrested
and sent to Bulawayo Central police remand prison yesterday the
3rd of July 2010. The four were arrested during a demonstration
against the University's decision to bar students who had
not fully paid their tuition fees from sitting for their end of
semester examinations. During the heavily participated demonstration
the Delta lecture hall was partially burnt down.
Students at the National
University of Science and Technology are being levied tuition fees
ranging from US$400 to US$800 per semester, this is despite the
sad fact that the majority of students reign from families where
their parents are poor peasants and civil servants who are earning
paltry salaries of US$120 and US$150.It has now became a trend in
most institutions of tertiary education the University
of Zimbabwe, Great Zimbabwe,University, Midlands State University,
polytechnic and teacher's colleges included that students
who cannot pay their tuition fees are not allowed to sit for their
end of semester examinations, hence making education a preserve
for a few elites. These poor students who failing to pay such diabolic
tuition fees structures are faced with a grim reality of either
to defer studies or dropout completely.
It is unfortunate that
under such a grave scenario the ministry of higher and tertiary
Education has systematically continued to deny that students are
being barred from examination halls, as well as access to their
previous examination results. Of late even the Prime Minister Tsvangirai
denied this sad reality basing his ignorance on a cadaverous cadetship
scheme. We therefore cannot help suspecting that this denial of
facts is incorrect and unfair to the intelligence of our leaders.
Let it be known that the inclusive government has presided over
the highest number of dropouts and deferments and they have used
the cadetship scheme to conceal this monumental government failure.
The events at the National
University of Science and Technology should however, send a loud
and clear message to the Prime Minister and his entire government
beroucrates that the cadetship is a moribund modern form of slavery
and the students of Zimbabwe have refused to be enslaved. Time has
come for our leaders especially the ministry of Higher and Tertiary
Education to desist from deceiving the nation and the world that
there is a loaning scheme when students are being subjected to traumatic
tendencies by college and university authorities.
Meanwhile ZINASU
has since conducted lawyers from the Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) who have since deployed some
personnel in order to fight for the release of the arrested comrades.
ZINASU would
however wish to inform this inclusive government that no amount
of gangsterism nor harassment shall intimidate us down into submission,
the demonstrations which we have since started shall devour the
whole nation until we have been granted the riches of our demands.
ZINASU has also sought a meeting to discuss this crisis with ministry
of Higher and Tertiary Education, which is yet to be confirmed.
Visit the ZINASU
fact
sheet
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