It appears that the fees have not quite fallen at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University as irate students consorted to shut down the campus on Monday July 11.
Students are protesting on the basis that the University is withholding results and barring students from registering for the second semester due to outstanding fees. The SRC met with management to discuss the memorandum of demands handed over earlier today. Management has conceded and agreed to release the results later today. Furthermore, exams that were meant to take place this week have been postponed and will take place three weeks from now.
According to the official memorandum of demands handed over to management by SASCO, the strike has not only been sparked by students whose results were withheld. The strike was also prompted by management’s failure to make good on their promise to implement in-sourcing and to increase in wages from R3500 to R5000 for campus security guards, kitchen staff and grounds staff.
Workers told News24 that they were still working under the same conditions as the previous year. An excerpt from the memorandum stated: “The deliberate delaying of in-sourcing, in order to de-motivate workers‚ [is an attempt] to weaken even SASCO as a transformation tool.”
The university revealed in a statement that it was currently hosting urgent talks with the unions and worker representatives “with the express purpose of returning the campuses to normalcy”.
Written by: Tammy Fray
