Anxiety over allowances causing sleepless nights

For many government-sponsored first year students, it is the prospect of accessing their much-coveted student living allowances that is keeping them from hitting the sack.Beginning students say they have been arriving at school as early as 1am to keep their place in imperceptibly moving queues to get hold of the bank cards which will take them a step closer to their allowance.  At University of Botswana (UB), those getting up in the early hours are the lucky ones; they are the ones whose allowances have definitely been credited into their accounts.

"We have been divided into different groups.  The [Student Representative Council] put up a list on August 26, with all the names of the people whose allowances are in, and those are the ones who can queue for their cards," a first year student reading for a Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences, told Mmegi in an interview.