Gcino Ngubane

Students are fed up as Risk Management Services (RMS) and university facilities have proven to be not conducive to the students. On the 14^th of September students were locked in the main campus LAN for a period of 30 minutes because the turnstiles were not working. The students had to then wait for the RMS to come and open the turnstiles. This incident has occurred on several occasions where students cannot enter or exit LANs or university venues. This is the same problem with the WOB entry turnstiles where the cards fail to swipe in when trying to enter WOB residences. Yesterday the RMS had to open the main gate in WOB so that the students could enter. Students do not have free time on their hands, being stuck at the gate for 30 minutes means that precious time is wasted which could have been used for something else. The students have not complained so far considering that there have been no strikes thus far, while issue that some gates are not properly functioning has been brought to RMS’s attention. Another issue which students are facing is that of theft in residences. Three weeks ago there was a man, whose name has been withheld, who was caught stealing a laptop in one of the blocks in WOB residence. The students took the law in their own hands, got together from different blocks and beat the thief. The young man was beaten until he became unconscious, RMS tried to intervene to stop the crowd to no avail as students have become so angry and irritated by continuous theft in residences. Later on that night the SAPS arrived and rescued the thief from the grips of the angry mob. They took the owner of the laptop to go and make the statement at the police station. The owner of the laptop asked for his name not to be mentioned in the paper.