Students from Ntare Rugamba University protest against school management

First final year students of the bachelor’s degree program, in the Faculty of Civil Engineering at Ntare Rugamba University made a sit-in on Tuesday, October 15 in front of the headquarters of the school establishment. They accuse the school management of refusing to give their academic documents.

Some of the students conducting a sit-in at the headquarters of Ntare Rugamba University

Fifty-three young people complain that their future is threatened. This Tuesday, over twenty of them conducted a sit-in in front of the building that houses the offices of their university. Young people seem to be lost and confused, under a blazing sun. For the nth time, they have just been dismissed:

“You cannot see the rector, the only one who is authorized to settle your grievances. He is not here, the secretary informs us,” reports J.K one of the students.

Since February, they ask in vain for their academic documents. “After completing the bachelor’s degree, the university administration required us to study an additional year to complete four years instead of three as prescribed by the ministerial ordinance governing the BMD system, but we refused,” he says.

With the refusal, some of the students, suspected to be instigators of the protests have been deleted from the list of students in Bac III. After that, the university management issued in February 2019 a note canceling their registration for this academic year. “We learn afterwards that Bac III was finally canceled for everyone,” according to JK.

“From then on, we no longer had the right to obtain our academic documents as well as the school transcripts of the first two years. We are required to pay the fees of the canceled year and registration to repeat the third year. ”
These students accuse the school management of retaining their documents. “At least, they should give us transcripts of the first two years. “ Even if the year is canceled, we are not forced to stay in the same academic institution,” says J. M another student.

These students claim to be victims of the lack of academic documents. “Since July, I have already missed three job opportunities because I do not have any academic document,” he says.

Philippe Buyungu, Rector of Ntare Rugamba University claims to be unaware of these complaints. “They never told me about these grievances,” he says, adding however, without giving any details that he sent them a “correspondence”, but they did not respond.