Former Busoga varsity students to miss exams

What you need to know:

  • Complaint. The students say they are being asked to pay tuition despite having paid in their former university.

Kampala.

Nursing students previously at Busoga University are stuck after the institutions they were relocated to last month demanded they pay fees before sitting end of semester exams today.
The students, who have since been distributed to three nursing institutions; Lubega School of Nursing in Iganga, Johnass International College of Health Sciences in Buikwe District, and Iganga School of Nursing, claim they had already paid tuition to Busoga University School of Nursing and Midwifery before government closed it and offered to turn it into a public university.
“We are beginning exams tomorrow (today). I had already paid my fees for the semester but when I was brought at Lubega Nursing, they asked me to pay again which money my parents said they don’t have,” one of the affected students who preferred anonymity, told Daily Monitor in an interview yesterday.
At Busoga University, the students said they were paying Shs1.4 million per semester against Shs1.8 million the new institutions are demanding, yet the students were posted there less than a month to the end of the semester.
But Ms Safinah Museene, the Business, Technical and Vocational Education Training commissioner, yesterday advised the students to seek court redress, saying as the ministry of Education, their role was to ensure affected students are placed in other nursing institutions to enable them continue with their studies.
“We are not going to look into the past. We didn’t audit the university to see who had paid or not. We wanted to manage the crisis by making sure the students don’t miss exams. We would like to advise the students to take legal action against Busoga University. As for us, we were not there when they paid. Our mandate was to see that the students complete their studies,” she said.
The students yesterday said the government was acting irresponsibly and instead of protecting them, they were “dumped in the new institutions without an explanation”.
They say it is difficult to organise their colleagues to go to court since they are scattered in different institutions.
On May 9, Mr James Mugerwa, the ministry of Education assistant commissioner in-charge of vocational education, wrote to Busoga University School of Nursing and Midwifery principal informing him that his office had distributed their students to other institutions.
This followed government’s closure of the university last year over failure to meet the required minimum standards.