12 Feb 2017

The Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology Dr Alfred Madigele, said government was concerned about the recent destruction of property at the University of Botswana.
In an interview after the school tour to assess damage caused following students’ class disruptions, Dr Madigele said the University of Botswana was built through self-reliance, and the recent acts by students of vandalism, damage to institutional and private property and threat to the safety and security of the university community were disturbing.
Areas affected included the book store, restaurants and other property which Dr Madigele said should be accounted for.
The minister said investigations were ongoing and had since met with the university management to ensure that those involved account for their misdeeds.
He said the university council would meet today to discuss issues related to the illegal strike after which a date would be set for the re-opening of the school.
Dr Madigele said the process of crediting money into students’ accounts had been that at the beginning of a semester students were expected to register with their respective institutions to verify that they were continuing students.
He said it was therefore imperative that all institution conduct registration on time so that names were submitted to the Department of Tertiary Financing (DTEF) without delay to enable them to facilitate tuition fees.
The DTEF he said would not accept names that came in piecemeal, adding that the main challenge was that there was lack of synchronisation between the opening of institutions, registration period, and submission of names to DTEF.
Dr Madigele said although schools opened in January some institutions were yet to submit registered students to DTEF, adding that there was no how DTEF could credit students’ allowance and tuition fees without having received registers. ENDS