Something is deadly wrong with the services and operations at UG

Jun 18, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
I am writing this letter to inform other students of my experience and the general populace of the lack of communication and attention that is ongoing at the University of Guyana among the different departments that interact with the students on a formal basis.
Students doing MNG 2100 – Computer Studies 1, this summer, are made to bring along their own computers to do the practical component of the course seeing that the lab – as we were reliably informed – is not operational during the summer. Yet this course with an IT base is being offered, why then can’t the lab be made available? What about students like me, who don’t own a computer? How do we survive this summer without the use of the lab?
Even during the semester, it’s a known fact that about 400 students do this course since it’s a cross faculty course, and there are only about 200 computers in the lab if that much. Those that can’t afford to get a computer to use are forced to endure the semester without a comprehensive understand of the practical element of the course; and needless I say this course has one of the highest failure rate at the university.
Students during the summer are still required to pay the full $28,000 to do this course, is this fair? I am going to ask the Ministry of Education for a Great Wall Laptop computer since I can’t afford, and I need it to do this course since the computer labs are not available. On the second day of the MNG class, there was a clash with two classes for the use of the room at CBJ and students were then asked to go to another room that had no electricity, obviously the class session did not even take off and that day was lost from an 8 weeks program.
Now it’s one thing to have to endure mosquitoes all semester and constant blackouts but now having no electricity in the room we were asked to use, at a time when half of the campus is out on summer break, tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the operation at the University of Guyana.
I received a mail from University of Guyana stating “Students make a minimum payment of fifty percent (50%) of the tuition fee by June 16, 2017.” This is for the students who are doing summer courses. As usual when any payment is made to the bank for UG, the students are required to take in the receipt to the bursary. I did as I know this is the usual procedure. On my arrival at the bursary after paying the 50% at the bank, I was told that I have to pay all then bring in the receipt.
Since they are not accepting part payment receipts, but I am being told to do part payment, am I to deduce that from the email that I am only supposed to pay but not bring in the receipt as evidence of my payment, when that is usually done? My time was wasted.
Even the $80 taxi drivers are telling us that they cannot go beyond the parking lot to the registration building at the back as usual, except if it is before 9:00am. I guess that’s for the staff’s convenience, but what about the students who have to walk some distance. It might sound simple but little by little UG seems to all sorts of changes creeping in, which frankly in my opinion is making the life of the students difficult. What might be a better thing to pay attention to is the water wasting at the side of catwalk from that ½” pipe, or the trees that are growing on the electrical wire in the UG compound. In this letter, I cannot even begin to crack the ice on the woes at UG, and it’s not my intention to beat up on the university but some things are just irritating, the incidents of a lack of communication and a lack of attention being paid are just too much. I saw a sign at the railway embankment at the entry to UG, promoting a party on the 1st of July entitled “Anything goes”, that sign is better placed at the gate of the University of Guyana.
Samuel Gillis

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