NUNURAI JENA MORE than 2 000 Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) students were last week sent home after failing to pay full fees for this semester.
The students had brought part fees because they could not raise the required US$509 before the university opened. But when the students arrived at the university, which has an enrolment of
6 000, they were told to go back home and bring the balance before attending lessons. CUT marketing and information director, Musekiwa Tapera confirmed that the university required full tuition fees before students attended lecturers. He said the students and parents needed to plan well in advance because CUT was not a charity organisation.
“Parents must plan for their children’s tuition fees well in advance as we need the money to run the university,” he said. “We badly need resources for operations and to keep the standard that befits the college that is Chinhoyi University.”
Even students who are on cadetship have been affected as the university requires them to pay something before they start to attend classes. One student, who identified himself as Munashe and son to a peasant farmer in Kanyaga, Makonde, said the university authorities had no heart.
Munashe, who was in tears as he talked to StandardCommunity, said he had only brought US$300 after selling one of the family’s beasts.
“Even if I go back home, there is no way my father can raise the remainder in a very short space of time considering that he had to sell one of the few cattle we have in our kraal,” he said. Student leaders condemned university authorities, labelling them “insensitive to the plight of students” in the face of abject poverty in the country.
Luke Maenzanise, Zimbabwe National Student Union CUT president said the situation was very pathetic at the university. Zinasu claimed that about 4 000 students had been affected. Maenzanise said the university authorities were evading them as they tried to find a solution to the plight of the affected students.
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He said students leaders had approached Mashonaland West provincial governor Faber Chidarikire, whom he said promised to look into their issue at the shortest possible time. Efforts to get a comment from the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Stan Mudenge were fruitless last week.
