GTC Students Decry Wasted Years

Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday August 21, 2017 16:49

Three programmes have been adversely affected by the repeated course extensions namely; Diploma in Hospitality Management, Diploma in Travel Management and Diploma in Culinary Arts, in the process frustrating the student community.

At a press conference called by the Botswana National Union of Students, (BONUS) on Friday, some of the affected students bemoaned no sense of urgency from management and the ministry in addressing student concerns despite numerous attempts to have the situation normalised.

They spoke of numerous correspondences that have been made between the student community and authorities since 2016 when the piloting batch for the above programmes was supposed to graduate.

The learners were enrolled under a pilot project called Better Education for Africa Rise (BEAR). This was supposed to be an upgrade from the normal BTEP certificate qualification, which was initially offered for hospitality management, travel management and culinary arts programmes.

All these programmes had a combined number of 150 students with about half of them having quit on the way realising that the programme was a waste of their time.

“Those of us who came in 2014 were supposed to graduate in June, 2016, but our stay was extended to December same year. There was then another extension to April, 2017. This was also pushed further to June, 2017. But then the students had to wait until July for their results which became a mess and some of us refused to sit for yet another exam before our results are normalised,” one of the students lamented.

The students said they were losing hope and did not know what to do as the management is now throwing insults at them for requesting meetings to resolve their issues.

BONUS deputy secretary general, Tebogo Mmolotsane said they were considering the legal route as their attempts to help the students amicably are bearing no fruits.

“We have been trying to help resolve the issue, but the ministry and management are reluctant to engage us. We requested meetings and were turned off,” he said. Mmolotsane said they were going to demand a combined press conference with the ministry and GTC management and if that fails they will take the legal route.