By Ntsebeng Motsoeli
MASERU — First semester examinations at the Maluti College of Nursing proceeded on Monday after the High Court ordered the school’s management to recall students following an indefinite closure.
The management closed the school last Thursday after students boycotted classes to force them to address their grievances.
On Friday students representatives issued the management with a court order that allows them to enter the college premises to continue preparing for end of semester examinations that are starting on Monday.
Students had stopped attending lectures to force management to deal with their concerns about the fees and their allowances for clinical placement at the school’s hospital.
The college is run by the Maluti Adventist Hospital and students are normally posted to the hospital for internships.
The student representative council (SRC) president, Jordan Kamanga, said examinations went well even though they started a bit later than schedule.
“First to third year nursing students wrote the exams though they started slightly late. Things are back to normal and midwifery students are still going on with their school work. “The management is expected to go to court on December 2 to show cause why the school was closed,” Kamanga said.
“We have had to get the court order so that we could continue to prepare for examinations. We had to seek the court’s intervention when we were sent home just a few days before exams started,” Khauhelo Matsapa said.
He said students want the management to stop demanding top-up payments on their fees.
Matsapa said students have to pay a heavy fee on top of the National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS) that the management claims has to cover other expenses incurred in their learning.
“This year the top-up fee is over M7 000. That is a lot of money that many of us cannot afford.
“The students want the management to stop charging that fee or to negotiate with NMDS to increase our allowances,” Matsapa said.
They also wanted the management to increase their allowances for clinical placement at the hospital.
Matsapa said they realised lately that they were being underpaid for doing work at the hospital.
“We learnt when the management said it had introduced a new formula for calculating our monies that we have been underpaid. We were told that there are more students than in the past year.”
“We realised that we were getting between 50 and 70 lisente an hour depending on the hours you have clocked. The money is just too little for the work we do.”
Attempts to get the management’s comment were not successful.
