TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MOMBASA ALSO STRIKES; KENYAN EDUCATTION SYSTEM IS GETTING LAME DAILY.
Every day we wake up in the morning with new stories in Kenya. If it is not a grand corruption deal, then it must be a political propaganda to keep the politics arena warm. Trends are changing nowadays with recurrent cases of universities students striking. University of Eldoret did strike over administration leadership issues, next came the university of Kabianga and before long the trend had developed with most recently Maseno and Bondo universities too dancing to the tune. Theirs were issues to do with politics. With politics comes the inception of student unions which in most cases go on logger heads with the administrations.
Technical university of Mombasa on the 19th of October 2015 woke up to an unrest which students said was addressing the issue of increase of fees by the university administration. The student union complained bitterly of their unanswered memos by the administration over the fees issue. The five thousand shillings increment for the self sponsored and seven thousand for government sponsored students is the primary point of contention in this unrest. The students claim that they were left out of the decision table regarding this issue. The administration on the hand led by the vice chancellor Prof. Josephat Mwatela claims that the student leaders were consulted and agreed to the deal, a deal he claims was reached to raise the fee to cover trips gone outside Mombasa.
The strike that started as a small “kamukunji” trying to find a solution to the problem broke loose when the students moved out of the university and started destroying property, they later confronted the police with stones, and this led to closing of the road that leads to Mombasa town. Finally their angers were turned to two Mombasa county vehicles which they torched outside the university. These were vehicles that help in waste management in the city. This aspect of destroying property agitated the Mombasa governor Ali Hassan Joho who demanded an explanation and promised dire consequences for the university students in regards to seeking attachment and employment at the county government.
These strike cases have led to most universities closing down and the students get into uncalled for vacations. Destroying of university properties has been a challenge to most universities where they spend huge amounts of money in repairs; money that otherwise could have been spent in boosting research in our Kenyan universities. Research has been doing poorly in most universities and with the alarming rise in cases of universities being closed down, education training and management also gets affected in terms of quality training, administration and capacity building.
I wish to challenge university administration and management to sit down and develop a proper management strategy of addressing student concerns. Most of the students nowadays are smart and old style of running universities should be revised and this could see student unrest decline. To students, college time is time to build character and learning on new ways of handling issues, with such kind of unrests doing rounds nowadays, you are not doing enough. But then there is a chance to better your tomorrow.
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