EASTERN PROVINCE

BUGESERA—School ETO-Nyamata is claiming about Frw10 million in unpaid tuition costs from students as the academic year draws to a close.

Deputy headmaster Prosper Rucyaha said on Wednesday that the debts had plunged the school to ‘near crisis’ as many functions of the school failed to operate.

Scores of students have claimed they have been denied access to end-of-year exams on grounds that tuitions had yet to been paid.

Some say the school is acting more like a business than an educator. Most of the fee-defaulters claim they are paid for by different non-governmental organizations in the country.

"We decided to press the students because the organizations they claimed were paying for them have never showed up. We pressed them hoping they would yield to pressure and clear their outstanding debts.”

For some students the money allegedly accumulated since 2005 at a rate of Frw44,000 each semester. Rucyaha said one student, because of pressure, had offered a mobile telephone as guarantee but he wondered how a student could own a phone without paying tuition.

He said they would ‘inevitably’ allow students to sit for exams but would withhold reports. The school listed over ten non government organizations that allegedly sponsor the affected students, including World Vision, Caritas, Fawe, Urunana, Global fund and Compassion.

"It is serious. Some students have never paid even a single coin” he said, waving a sheet of the students’ record payment.
It has however emerged that there is no clear evidence affected students were being sponsored by the organizations they claim; some are even unable to give the contacts of their alleged sponsors for the school to contact them.

To curtail the problem, Rucyaha said next academic year the school would step up control to ensure that the students turn out with their alleged sponsors such that an understanding is made between the sponsor and the school not the students.

Ends