Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) is under police surveillance after a section of students threatened to destroy the administration block on Tuesday.
Police at Mbarara central police station have since Monday evening been on high alert after being called to intervene by the university administration following threats that students were planning to cause havoc by setting the administration block on fire. The students are angry with the administration for blocking them from sitting end of
first semester exams on grounds that they have not paid up all the fees.
Mwanga Kyaligonza, the commander field force unit Mbarara area says they are monitoring the situation at MUST to prevent any chaos at the university.
Mwanga says they will keep monitoring the university until the end of first semester on December 10th 2011.
A total of 100 undergraduate students were on Monday blocked from sitting their end of first semester exams for failure to pay up to zero balance university fees.
MUST has an enrolment of 3,230 students for the year 2011/2012 and out of this, 70 are members of staff pursuing post graduate courses under staff development program (SDP).
Dennis Lukaya, the MUST public relations officer says the university has in the past been allowing students to sit exams before completing tuition fees but later it was discovered that many students after completing exams disappear abandoning their academic documents.
He says the practice has made the university to lose over 1 billion shillings in debts and yet it needs money to operate fully.
Lukaya says the university is now revising its policy of zero school fees pay up before being allowed to sit exams.
But this policy has not gone down well with 100 first year students who claim they have not been able to pay up all the fees due to the biting poverty.
Moses Kyankiruho, one of the affected students says his parents have failed to pay the balance on tuition because of the financial crisis at home. He is bitter with the university administration for refusing them to sit their exams and later pay off the balance.
But Lukaya reveals that most of the students instead of paying all the tuition, first give the money to business people in Mbarara town on grounds that they will return it with profits and end up being coned while others squander it deliberately. He says the practice is not new mostly among first year students.
He said the affected students will get a chance to apply for special exams due in August 2012 or apply for a dead year at no extra cost.
The Academic Registrar Stephen Bazirake said on Monday all students were informed about the zero-balance fees policy early enough at the beginning of the semester.
In the past years students were allowed to sit exams with a minimum balance of 200,000 shillings. For those that failed to clear, their transcripts would consequently be withheld.
Bazirake said a number of students have abused the offer of sitting exams with tuition fees balance.
The Government sponsors only 20 percent of the students at MUST with majority absorbed as private scholars.
