Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN) students have called on President Peter Mutharika to intervene in the tuition fees saga that has rocked the University of Malawi (Unima) within five days or alternatively declare that public tertiary education is an ambit of the rich.<\/p>\n
After unsuccessful attempts to convince Unima Council to reverse its decision of raising fees across its constituent colleges, the students have turned their appeal to Mutharika who is their chancellor.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has been arguing that Unima Council has the prerogative to raise fees as it deems necessary, without the interference of government.<\/p>\n
But a similar decision was once reversed by former president the late Bingu wa Mutharika after he was courted to intervene in the saga which had then reached unprecedented proportions.<\/p>\n
In their petition titled \u201cWe say no to fees hike\u201d which was delivered to Mutharika through Lilongwe District Commissioner, Charles Makanga, the students say the hike runs counter to Mutharika\u2019s own commitment of ensuring that public tertiary education is accessible to everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel that through your office, Sir, you have the capacity to solve this and we believe your coming in shall seriously show how dedicated your office is to [seeing] Malawian poor deserving students propelling [sic] in Unima corridors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOtherwise, failure to do so, we request you to declare to us that public education is for the rich and Malawi has no public education for the poor deserving students,\u201d reads part of the petition.<\/p>\n
The students argue that the hike will continuously result in the indefinite closure of colleges which is the major reason Malawi has poor quality tertiary education.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollege calendars will definitely be disturbed. Students get disturbed and there will likely be poor outcomes as students graduate half-baked,\u201d the petition adds.<\/p>\n
Makanga said his office would deliver the petition to the office of the students\u2019 chancellor the same day.<\/p>\n
In Blantyre, KCN students also petitioned the President through Blantyre District Commissioner, Charles Kalemba, at the Civic Offices.<\/p>\n
The students marched peacefully amid heavy presence of armed police officers.<\/p>\n
Speaking after presenting the petition to the DC, Gift Banda, KCN students president said the current university fees will hinder poor but deserving students from attaining tertiary education.<\/p>\n
He said the President, as the Chancellor of the University of Malawi, must make a directive to have the fees reduced.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf students were withdrawing from the universities before the fees were hiked, where will they get the money to pay the current fees? The President as the Chancellor must make a directive to have the fees reduced otherwise only rich few people will be educated,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n
Banda said if the President does not intervene in the matter, the students will continue with protests which will only prolong their school calendars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN) students have called on President Peter Mutharika to intervene in the tuition fees saga that has rocked the University of Malawi (Unima) within five days or alternatively declare that public tertiary education is an ambit of the rich. After unsuccessful attempts to convince Unima Council to reverse its decision of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29009,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29003\/revisions\/29009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}