Come for help: Sissala West MP to fee-owing KNUST students

The office of the Sissala West Member of Parliament, Mr Mohammed Adams Sukparu, has called on students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) who are from his constituency and are part of those deferred as a result of nonpayment of fees, should get in touch with his office for assistance.

This comes on the back of a directive by the management body of KNUST asking students who did not pay 70 per cent of their academic facility user fees, as required by the university, to defer their courses.

A statement issued by the MP’s office on Thursday, 21 April 2022 and signed by the lawmaker, urged affected students from the constituency to contact the under-listed persons at the Sissala Union President of KNUST: Bakpa Abdul-Bari, Mohammed Ali and Ali Guguo for assistance.

Some 6,000 students of the KNUST’s 85,000 population are deferring their courses for their inability to pay their schools fees in full.

The university announced that students who owe more than 70 per cent of their school fees were to automatically defer their courses by 7 April 2022.

Despite the affected students having been allowed to sit their mid-semester exam which started on 11 April 2022, those who still had not paid up after the first exam week were forced to defer their courses.

The University Relations Officer, Dr Daniel Norris Bekoe, said on Wednesday, 20 April that there was the need to “apply the fees policy this year which has been approved by the academic board and it is required that as an undergraduate student you must register your courses at the beginning of the semester and pay 70%.”

Despite a three-month window – February to April – for students to fully pay up their arrears, Dr Bekoe said: “A number of students are playing games with the University”.

“For example, they use their school fees to buy Uber; others are setting up bakeries…while others are using it for betting, and we have evidence,” he told Accra-based Joy FM.

Meanwhile, the Students’ Parliament of the KNUST has attributed the inability of the affected students to pay their academic facility user fees to the protracted strike by the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) that marred the beginning of the semester.

According to the Students’ Parliament, “the University Relations Office and various forms of student communication did a poor job of informing students about the policy’s requirements”.

“Except for an impromptu flier with a little portion of the policy captured on it, no extensive measures were taken to address Students on this issue.”

It continued: “We can’t address this problem without taking into account the disruptions to the academic schedule caused by the UTAG strike, which has caused students to stay and spend longer than they intended before returning to campus.

“We must keep in mind that some students are self-parenting and may be obliged to spend on their tuition fees as a result of the extended academic calendar.”