By Emmanuel Mwandama, a Contributor
About forty three students from the University of Malawi, College of Medicine, risk losing their places at this institution due to lack of school fees.
According to Jeremiah Dambuleni who is one of the forty three, the students were once on a Daeyang University scholarship scheme but along the way the university withdrew the scholarship and this forced the students to go back to Unima council for a discussion on the way forward.
“After the withdrawal of the scholarship by Deayang University, we were stranded. We had a discussion with the Unima council where we were told that we would be paying US$5,500 annually. We told them the fees were on a higher side and then they promised to look into the matter,” said Dambuleni.
Later, the students engaged the services of a private legal practitioner to stop the university from withdrawing them from the college.
“Since we were afraid of being withdrawn from the college, we sought the legal redress. As of now the court is yet to make its position clear on this matter. And the University of Malawi council says it shall wait for what the court shall say. But our names are not on the list of the students to attend classes this coming Monday. We are afraid things are getting out of hand,” said Dambuleni.
A good number of these students are in their fourth year at the college. It remains an open secret that many able young Malawians fail to further their education because of financial constraints.
One of the very crucial issues during the 2020 campaign period was the high fees for tertiary education but it remains to be seen if the new regime will do something about this.
Efforts to talk to the Unima Council proved futile as their phones went unanswered.
