By Maada Gumbu, PV Correspondent, Freetown.
Former students of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, have vowed to storm the college soon and demand money owed them since 2005.
They were awarded government bursaries in 2005 but the college’s policy is that a student who had won a bursary should still pay fees for a semester at the time the bursary was won from government.
The money, the college will tell the bursary holder, will be refunded after government has effected the payment into the account of the university (this usually takes a while). But it has taken close to five years now for this group of very angry and frustrated students to get their refund.
The leader of the affected students who met in Freetown on March 30, Matthew Kekura, said their monies should have been refunded in 2007.
“But since their was a change of government in 2007 as a result of the election, the college authorities took advantage of that and apparently did what they wanted with the money”, he said.
The students have vowed to storm the college en masse and demand their money back soon.. They said refunds for other years (after 2005) had been made but theirs had not been made for reasons yet unknown.
“We have gone to the Ministry of Education where we were told that the payment had been effected into the account of the univeristy long ago”. Kekura said. According to Education officials the amount involved is about five hundred million Leones (about USD 129,000).
According to University sources, Fourah Bay College was founded on the 18th of February, 1827, by the Church Missionary Society essentially for the training of teachers and missionaries to serve in the promotion of education and the spread of Christianity in West Africa. In 1876 it became a degree granting institution with an affiliation to the University of Durham in England, and since then has maintained a reputable tradition of higher education in Africa.
In 1960 it was granted a Royal Charter to become “FOURAH BAY COLLEGE“ The University College of Sierra Leone,” by the Senate of the University of Durham.
Before its current location on Mount Aureol, overlooking Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, Fourah Bay College was located at Cline Town, on the East End of Freetown, and then as a result of world war II Mabang in the Northern Province.
In 1967, the College was merged with Njala University College, Moyamba District, to become the University of Sierra Leone, with a federal system. The latter was replaced in 1972 by a unitary structure which came to include the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS) and the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM).
The 2005 Universities Act further restructured the system of higher education in Sierra Leone to produce two universities, the Njala University and the University of Sierra Leone, with the latter comprising Fourah Bay College, COMAHS (incorporating the Nursing Education Centre and the Pharmacy Technicians School) and the Institute of Public Administration and Management.
Photo: Education Minister Minkailu Bah.
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