|
News Items:
|
|
Headlines
|
|
News Briefs
|
|
Stories
|
|
Movies
|
|
Word To Life
|
|
More News:
|
|
Vatican
|
|
Africa
|
|
Special Sections:
|
|
2006 in review
|
|
Inside the Curia
|
|
Archives:
|
|
Vatican II at 40
|
|
John Paul II
|
|
Other Items:
|
|
Client Area
|
|
Links
|
|
Origins
|
|
.
|
|
Did You Know...
|
The whole CNS
public Web site
headlines, briefs
stories, etc,
represents less
than one percent
of the daily news
report.
Get all the news!
If you would like
more information
about the
Catholic News
Service daily
news report,
please contact
CNS at one of
the following:
cns@
catholicnews.com
or
(202) 541-3250
|
|
.
|
|
Copyright:
|
This material
may not
be published,
broadcast,
rewritten or
otherwise
distributed.
Copyright
(c) 2007
Catholic News
Service/U.S.
Conference of
Catholic Bishops.
|
|
 |
|
CNS Story:
|
ZIMBABWE-STUDENTS Sep-21-2007 (400 words) xxxi
Without housing, Zimbabwean students likely to quit, says official
By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- With housing at Zimbabwe's largest university closed for more than two months, many students are likely to drop out as they struggle to find food, shelter and transportation to their lectures, said a church official.
Officials at the University of Zimbabwe in the capital, Harare, are defying a high court order to reopen residences they closed in July and "are adamant that they will not let the students return," said Alouis Chaumba, head of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe.
"The situation is terribly bad," Chaumba said in a Sept. 21 telephone interview from Harare. He said students "are commuting to the university from all over the country."
After students' failure to pay additional housing fees and incidents of vandalism on campus that authorities blamed on students, university officials ordered up to 5,000 students out of university housing July 9 just as they were to begin two weeks of exams. The court order to reopen the residences came a week later.
However, with the housing remaining closed, "the students have to find transport to campus," which is about three miles from central Harare, Chaumba said. With chronic shortages of fuel, "fares are very expensive," he said.
Many walk to save the fare, "but it's very hot and they get tired walking this distance to and from lectures every day," he said.
The Harare-based justice and peace commission "managed to provide them with one meal a day during exams, and now they are trying to find their own food and shelter," Chaumba said.
Many students "are likely to drop out," he said.
Parents are struggling to pay their children's university fees in a country crippled by the highest rate of inflation in the world and unemployment of more than 80 percent, Chaumba said.
Shortages of food, foreign currency and fuel are acute in Zimbabwe, and large numbers of people are migrating to the neighboring countries of South Africa and Botswana. With elections scheduled for March, political violence has intensified.
Two student union leaders were arrested Sept. 18 during a campus protest to demand a resolution to problems affecting students, reported the U.N. news agency IRIN.
The report said that some students without housing sleep in the waiting room at Harare's central railway station.
END
Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
|
|
|
|
