Students at Evelyn Hone College yesterday staged a protest against Government’s decision to close the college to facilitate the holding of a census.
The college was to close during the three-week period in which the 2010 economic and population census would run. The nationwide census starts today and the measure to close the college would have sent 6, 200 students home.
The students said the main reason the Government wanted the college closed was to have the hostels vacated to accommodate enumerators who would conduct the national counting exercise.
Students Union chairperson Marvin Kapenda told the Times that they had solicited a response from Science, Technology and Vocational Training Minister Brian Chituwo on why the college had to close just because of the census, but no response was forthcoming.
“So the students decided to carry out a peaceful protest and marched to the principal’s office to seek guidance on the matter because they felt that the closing would affect them academically”, said Mr Kapenda.
On hearing the singing and chants, police who were next to the Evelyn Hone were quickly deployed and surrounded the college without entering
According to the students union, the principal contacted the ministry and managed to speak to the permanent secretary who spoke to Dr Chituwo, who was out of town and the latter apparently gave the go-ahead for classes to go on.
The college management then produced a memo signed by the academic director informing the students of the minister’s decision reversal and telling them to go back to class.
“Students will go back to class but are a bit sceptical. First, the students feel that since the initial directive emanated from the minister’s office, the directive reversing the initial decision should come from the same office. Secondly, they question why it is the academic director and not the principal signing the memo informing them of the minister’s decision.
“We think that the management might be buying time and that the minister has not responded,” he said.
“Some students have started taking exams today, and if we don’t have classes, we might not be properly prepared which would mean sitting for the exams next year,” said Mr Kapenda.
[ Times of Zambia ]
Why not accommodate the enumerators at parliament motel. Better than turning it into a brothel.
Justified protest. This is Chituwo’s waste blunder. Where are these enumerators coming from? Abroad? Are they hiring some from Zimbabwe? Where do they live currently?
Great action students, let this useless govnt that lacks foresight go hang. Why disturbing education you MMD-thugs? If there are no places to hold the training at, you can pitch a tent in independence stadium and do the training in there. It is not raining yet. Or you can use Mulungushi cofference center since the useless Constitution fimofimo is finished.
yaba …awe kwena our MMd-govnt is full of people who cant think.
PLEASE LEAVE THE STUDENTS ALONE in the same way your dull children abroad are freely learning.
good work done guys…
Good that you didn`t resort to throwing stones.
Good observation Kalos212, I had the same questions. I was once an enumerator (1980) census and we were coming from our respective homes. It could be that things have drastically changed to warrant accomodating all enumerator at a central location to enable processing data 24/7.
# 6 ba Yangu, the difficulty part will be to comprehend how housing these counters (in plain English) will be financed. The bill that will be shown will be so inflated to an extent it will be worthless even doing this exercise. We shall see a bill just for month that could have covered one year’s student feeding at all these colleges. In fact the ministry should have engaged these same students to do this work as part time workers.
Parliament hotel is for slaughtering only,not for important events such as census.