Classes were disrupted on Wednesday at the Orbit TVET College, Rustenburg Campus, following protest action organised by the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCLSA) against poor infrastructure, shortage of lecturers and poor security services among other grievances.
YCLSA student leader Amantle Vikwane, said they have been submitting memorandums to management without any success and after the last submission on 18 April, they decided to embark on strike action.
“The reason why we resorted into having a shutdown at Orbit TVET college Rustenburg, is because we’ve been submitting a memorandum of demands to the management, like we did on the 18th of April this year, and made it clear on the memorandum that if ever they fail to comply with our ten commandments, we’ll resort into a shutdown.
“We have been trying to negotiate with the management to make the learning environment conducive in the college yet they’re not making it impossible for us to learn. For one, we don’t have water on campus. You can imagine being on campus from 7 in the morning until four in the 4 without water. You have to buy water from your own pocket, while on the other side you can’t use bathrooms.
“Bathrooms are dirty and management showed a self centred decision that they made a borehole to supply water only to their offices, and not into our classes or to our bathrooms. We have a shortage of lectures, we have been attending classes and 50% of the courses don’t have lectures.
“We also have students whom the institution owes money from 2016 to-date, they’ve not paid those students but the money is there, they just don’t want to pay students what is due to them, ” he said.
He has added that they will not stop with their protest until they’re demands have been met, even threatening a total shutdown of all Orbit TVET colleges in the Bojanala District municipality, starting from Thursday.
The college is yet to respond to our inquiries.
