Police in Lilongwe and Blantyre were on Monday involved in running battles with Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN) students, as the students protested the recently announced fees hike.
In Lilongwe, the police officers were called into action after the students blocked a road leading to their campus and Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH).
The students were dispersed and immediately went into hiding after the officers arrived at the scene.
The police officers are also said to have entered KCN campus, where they also dispersed the students using teargas. In the process, 11 students were arrested. Central Region police spokesperson, Ramsey Mushani, confirmed the arrest.
“The 11 students will answer the charge of conduct likely to cause breach of peace. There is evidence that the students went out of their campus to block some roads. Some of them were pelting stones at passing vehicles,” Mushani said.
In Blantyre, police arrested six KCN students for a similar demonstration.
But later in the day, the court released them on bail.
Five of the students, all female, were arrested at KCN Blantyre campus, behind the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), while the sixth one, male, was taken into a waiting police vehicle from around the referral health facility area.
Two guardians and a nurse at the hospital were also arrested in the process.
At around 10 o’clock in the morning, the students gathered on the Masauko Chipembere Highway side just outside QECH fence where they were under police watch for close to an hour before the law enforcers chased them out of the place.
When the students went inside the hospital fence, they re-strategised and moved towards the hospital’s main entrance where they blocked the road leading to some places including their campus, Blantyre Youth Centre, QECH Mortuary, Kachere Rehabilitation and Beit Cure.
The students that we talked to on the scene said they are not on any scholarship and their parents and guardians cannot afford the raised fees.
“We want them [Unima Council] to reconsider their decision to raise fees. Some of us are already struggling right now and there is nothing that we can do apart from voicing our concerns. We will not stop demonstrating against this apparent infringement on our right to education,” one of the students said before the arrests.
Effective 2016/17 academic year, government approved that regular students at Chancellor College should be paying K400,000. Students from KCN and Polytechnic will be paying K450,000 while College of Medicine students will be paying K600,000.
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