Maputo, 6 Oct (AIM) – The Mozambican Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Daniel Nivagara, has promised to ascertain the “inhuman conditions” in which the students of the boarding home of the Maputo School of Nautical Sciences claim to be living.
Nivagara’s promise emerged as a response to the detention of six students by the Mozambican Police (PRM), after they decided to demonstrate and march to the Minister’s office to show their indignation at the conditions to which they are subjected.
The demonstration took place on Monday involving almost 50 finalist students from the Maritime Navigation and Maritime Mechanical Engineering courses. Amid the demonstration, the Police detained the six students and presented them on Thursday to the court in the Municipal District of Kapfumo.
The students were then released, and the court scheduled their trial for next week.
Interviewed by the independent television channel STV, the minister said “what we’re going to do is look into the case. We will see what the students’ rights are and, of course, what the school’s position was. Based on that, we’ll take the most appropriate measures.”
The students had wanted to present their grievances to Transport Minister Mateus Magala.
“We decided to go and talk to the Minister of Transport because we had tried several times to solve the problem internally, but they never listened to us”, said one of the students, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Whenever we raised a concern, the next day they pretended to have solved it, but then everything went back to square one”
“Right now, we’re not just demonstrating because we’re hungry”, this student said. “We’re outraged because of the conditions of our residence: the water pipes are not working, on some floors the sinks are almost all clogged and we only have one toilet for more than 20 students.
The students also claim about the lack of food and the way the food is cooked. They say it causes health complications, “especially among the women, who are the ones who usually get sick the most.”
(AIM)
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