Some of the students of the prestigious Sefako Makgatho Health Science University, Pretoria,South Africa troop to the street yesterday and blocked the entrance to the university main campus to show their grievances to the inability of the school management to continue fulfilng their promise regarding the distribution of gadgets and provision of data to enable online teaching and learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic period.
The enraged students totaling about a hundreds in number prevented people coming in the campus by setting up burning tyres and wooden materials at the main entrance of the institution, carried placards, singing.different songs and asking the management of the school to save the academic year.
The students were saying, how can a university that teaches medical sciences and that producing medical doctors and nurses stop education that produces them knowing that this is when the country need more of them most, to combat the menace of Covid-19.
"After numerous unkept promises, it has become clear to students that management has been playing with their future," said Lereto Mokheranyana, President of the student representative council.
He further said, “This is not the first time we had a demonstration but what is common throughout these demonstrations is what the students have been raising time and time again."“Mainly the issue of online teaching and learning, which goes hand in hand with the gadgets but the university has been postponing since the first date which was April."
“They had made a commitment that by the end of April students would have commenced with online learning but subsequent to that, that date was moved to May 11.
“From there they moved the date again to June 1 and made the same commitment that by then we would have commenced with the learning but that did not happen.
“To date, July 20, we still don’t have gadgets even after management promised us that we would have them come this time.
"What perpetuates this issue is that there would be no communication between the university and students, and there is no accountability on the side of management."
Police personnel has however been drag to the scene of the demonstration to monitor the situation, to stop further protest and bring everything to order but the enrage students would not be swayed by the treat of the law enforcement agents.
The students said, the university needed to understand that they were running a small medical institution with just over 6 000 students and could not fail to the point that not a single laptop has been handed out.
Mokheranyana said the university was also asked to prioritise students who come from poor backgrounds and do not have environments suitable for studying, and also do not have laptops.
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