UNZA deregisters 1,132 students over failure to pay fees

COMMENT - The next government MUST start taxing the mines and get back to universal, no fee education. It has worked for Zimbabwe - which now has a 92% literacy rate, the highest on the African continent. Much maligned, they lead the way towards true liberation, which is economic independence.

UNZA deregisters 1,132 students over failure to pay fees
By Agness Changala
Sun 10 Oct. 2010, 04:01 CAT

THE University of Zambia has deregistered 1,132 students over their failure to pay tuition fees, students union president Timothy Lumba has disclosed.

Confirming the development to The Post, Lumba charged that the withdrawal of 1, 132 students from the 2010-2011 academic year reflects the government’s failure to honour its commitment and due responsibility to provide higher education.

Lumba said what was being demonstrated by the government was a clear lack or failure of intent of political will to acknowledge that the challenges of higher education had an overall bearing on the nation and its future.

He said if President Rupiah Banda or education minister Dora Siliya remained quiet on statistics approved and acknowledged by the University Council, it would affirm their stance that government had no will to address the problems at UNZA.

Lumba said it was clear for all to see that there was total neglect by President Banda’s administration on higher education as demonstrated by the same levels of funding over the last two years to UNZA and CBU.

Lumba said it was sad to note that even a body as distinguished as the University Council had remained adamant over the alarming statistics.

“There is a clear mismatch in terms of our vision as a nation to achieve high levels of human resource at higher education as envisaged in the vision 2030 and the route we have taken to ensuring that this is achieved. With an enrolment rate of two per cent and policies within higher institutions of learning that disadvantage the majority eligible vulnerable poor Zambians, the vision 2030 remains a mere fallacy and a political insult to the Zambians,” he said.

Lumba said Zambia needed an enrolment rate of up to 15 per cent at university entry to achieve the middle income nation status by 2030.

“To the contrary with only one university since independence and two that have just been transformed to that status it remains a mere machination of wishful thinking that we could become a middle income nation by 2030,” he said.

He challenged Siliya to brace herself with the problems of UNZA seeing that her focus had been on primary education aimed at meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on universal access to primary education.

Lumba reminded Siliya that as pupils progressed through the educational pyramid, they would have to access higher education at some point.

He said Siliya’s ministry must re-align its work plan to strike a balance with the needs of the day.

Lumba said it was not a secret that the failure by 1,132 students to register due to tuition fees as required by the 75 per cent payment policy has yet again denied innocent Zambians a life-time opportunity to education.