Kyambogo students resume lectures
Sep 19, 2013
Lectures at Kyambogo University resume after a day of strikes that saw five students expelled from the public institution.
By Michael Odeng
KAMPALA - Lectures at Kyambogo University resumed barely a day after business at the university was brought to a standstill over students strike.
Students were protesting a new tuition policy that required them to pay all tuition fees within the first six weeks of a semester.
Five students were expelled from the public institution for their role in the strike.
According to the new policy, all fresh students were also required sh50, 000 for late registration and sh20, 000 for continuing students.
A survey by the New Vision revealed that most lecture rooms were filled to capacity as Kyambogo University recovered from Monday’s student strike.
The university library; main building; the senate building; banks; internet cafes; secretarial bureaus; university bookshop, guild and staff canteens resumed normal operations.
Some students were engrossed in group discussions under trees and in classrooms over their fate as they awaited lectures while others aimlessly strode around campus.
The public institution has hosted several other such episodes of students taking on the administration.
Five months ago today, some Kyambogo University students put down their pens and went on strike protesting being blacklisted by the university administration for failure to pay tuition in the previous academic year.
Late 2012, students from the department of engineering striked over a leaked exam.
The faculty had asked all third-year students to re-sit an exam they had done the previous year, after it emerged that it had leaked to some of the students.
But the students rejected the proposal and suggested that the university punishes only those students involved.
Earlier in March the same year, police clashed with students during a strike inspired by students' fury over the university administration's failure to release faculty allowance for government sponsored students.
The students also claimed that the administration had delayed to release their examination results.
For their role in the March 2012 chaos, two students were consequently remanded to Luzira Prison after facing court with a dozen others.
true
Students make their way off the university campus after an announcement of the closure. PHOTO/Godfrey Kimono
In August last year, students were forced to return home when the administration decided to close Uganda's second-largest government university over a lectures' strike.
The University Council chairperson John Okedi announced the closure of the university and ordered the students off the campus.
The closure came after investigations into alleged mismanagement of the university.
Several months later, detectives from the office of the Inspector General of Government (IGG) arrested seven Kyambogo University council officials over mismanagement of the institution.
It was reported the seven officials had defied the IGG, Irene Mulyagonja's directive to stop any disciplinary proceedings against suspended vice-chancellor, Prof. Isaiah Omolo Ndiege.
RELATED