Concerned Students Movement (CSM), a movement that fights for students’ welfare at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Science (MUBAS), has said it will hold demonstrations to force university management to improve living conditions for students.
Speaking with this publication, the leader of the movement Peters Monjeza said there are a lot of challenges that the students, most especially the needy, are facing at the institution.
Among other challenges, Monjeza said the management is failing to handle accommodation issues as it has introduced a new system of selecting students to be accommodated on the campus where only a certain group of students are selected all the time leaving others suffering.
“The management has introduced a new system to aimed ensure fairness when selecting students on campus hostels but what we see is not the said fairness. The students who were given the accommodation last semester are the same who have been also given the accommodation this semester to begin in January next year yet we have many students who have never enjoyed the accommodation since being selected at the school. Others are in third year and others are finishing but they have never stayed at the campus, is that fairness?” said Monjeza.
Monjeza also blamed the government for not providing free meals to the students in public universities and colleges saying this is now contributing to poor quality of education in the country.
“The government should revise the decision of not providing free meals to the students. The students are suffering a lot. How can you expect good performance from such students without food. I am criticizing anyone who took his hand to remove the programme,” he said.
He added that if the management is not addressing the challenges, the movement is well prepared to hold the demonstrations at the campus in January next year.
“There are a lot of irregularities done by our management and I can say we will protest against their actions. We are tired with injustice happening at our institution especially the way the management is granting accommodation” said Monjeza.
Malawi University of Business and Applied Science has over 7000 students of which only 850 have been offered accommodation in the next semester to begin in January, 2022.
