TUT Polokwane Campus students evicted and left in the cold

Approximately one hundred students at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Polokwane Campus in Limpopo were evicted from their residences over the weekend.

The students who are beneficiaries of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) say that the lodge they have been staying at, since the beginning of the year, evicted them on Friday because their lease has lapsed.

The students say they did not feel safe sleeping outside the university gate on Sunday night. They claim the university is refusing to licence the lodge and renew the lease.

“They are chasing us; we don’t know how to stay now. We’ll be staying there for the past three months and the landlord says we must stay because TUT management said that they are still in the process to accredit that accommodation. We stayed outside where my friend got very; very sick to a point where she was admitted to hospital, she could not speak she was unconscious. The sad part is that it was raining and we were forced to come here because we had no place to sleep. So we asked to get inside the premises and they did not allow us to get in,” a student explains.

Shortage of student accommodation 

TUT responded via its spokesperson Phaphama Tshisikhawe saying the University is aware of and understands the frustrations of some of our registered students at the Polokwane campus, who have conveyed their grievances on the shortage of student accommodation.

“This is a crisis affecting universities across the country. Now we wish to inform our students that the university has taken the matter seriously and we working closely with campus management, campus SRC and student accommodation facilities in order to resolve this matter as quickly as possible,” says Tshisikhawe.

According to Tshisikhawe, they are working to ensure that all the affected students get accommodation by the end of Monday.