SRC at UFS wants management to halt operations until all students are registered

The Student Representative Council at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein says management should halt the operations at the institution until all students are registered. The call by the student leadership ended in demonstrations and picketing on the campus that led to the disruption of lectures.

President of the institutional SRC  Luvuyo Jacobs says this was after they delivered a memorandum with the list of demands to the university management. He says the response to their demands was not satisfactory, which resulted in mass action by students.

“Amongst this list of demands were the issues of the extension of the registration periods themselves, because we’ve seen that there are many students that were not registered yet. We also have issues like over-enrolments that we have been advocating for and also the issue of the meal and book allowances. There was then a request from the SRC that there should not be any operations of the university going on up until we have a favourable response in terms of the memorandum. That’s where now the students and student leaders this morning took the stand to try and close all the gates of the university,” says Jacobs.

Meanwhile, dozens of students at the University of the Free State’s Qwaqwa campus are stranded after the institution issued a notice yesterday instructing them to vacate the student residences by today. It followed yesterday’s protests during which students demanded that their NSFAS food and book allowances be paid out. They also raised concerns over challenges in the registration process.

“They don’t have the means of going home, they don’t have money. They are hungry and as we speak it’s a problem. We don’t know what will happen because when we are looking outside the gate, we can see that there is a security company that was hired by the university also the SAPS. We don’t know what will happen but we have already contacted the director of students on campus so that we can engage on this matter also the Dean of Students who is currently located in Bloemfontein Campus is also aware of this situation that we are having,”  President General of the SRC, Simphiwe Dube explains.