Makerere students leadership headed by the Guild President has set a condition before they can attend the meeting called for by the University.
Following last week’s strike by students that culminated into a number of them being injured and others arrested, the Makerere University administration released a statement calling upon all student leaders to attend a meeting with them to try and curb the situation.
In particular, the now acting Vice-Chancellor Umar Kakumba on Sunday wrote to Guild President Julius Kateregga requesting him to attend a meeting with the “university central management” slated for today Monday at the Senior Common Room, Main Building.
However, the student leaders insist that they will only attend this meeting in case the grounds are favourable for them.
According to the student leaders, the University must first cancel out all their suspension and warning letters issued to students because they were striking for their rights.
Besides, Kateregga also does not want some University heads to attend in particular Mr Murangira Gordon and Prof Elias Hisaali for reasons he is yet to mention.
Meanwhile, the students are protesting the 15 per cent tuition increment policy that they believe was signed without their proper consent.
The policy means that after five years, each student will be required to pay 75 per cent more something they claim is a hindrance to those mostly on private sponsorship who have to toil hard to get fees.
Last week, the University also released a clarification on the current fees policy indicating that there was no tuition increment for this academic year.
According to the Makerere University Management, the students continue to pay the fees as per the structure is given to each of them at the time of admission.
The University also adds that the policy being contested by the students was approved and implemented on July 2018.
And that it was approved after a thorough report presented by the special committee of the Guild representatives appointed by the Guild leadership whose work started on 4th June 2018.
As so doing, the University instead of increasing fees by the tune of 49% and 91% as it were in the earlier Management proposal they took the decision to put a uniform and moderate 15% increase in tuition fees across all programmes effective 2018/19 for the next 5 years.
This, however, means that students who joins the Makerere University at a given fees structure that has a 15% factored in, shall continue to pay similar fees until he completes the Course duration.
The increment of 15% however, only applies to first-year students (effective 2018/19) going forward and not continuing students.
By John Dalton Kigozi
