MOI UNIVERSITY STRIKE

Moi university students held a strike today on Monday 11th October 2019 after claiming the University failed to listen to their affecting issues. The students demonstrated along the streets of the University.

It is said that the students’ council (MUSO), had addressed the issues to the University board earlier. It promised of looking into the issues but seemingly went unfulfilled. Therefore, the students lost their patience and chose to demonstrate since they felt they were being neglected.
The demonstrations began as early as 7AM in the morning. This shows the students were prepared for the demonstrations, also another indication is according to how the masses turned up.

The strike hindered lectures from taking place that day.
The demonstrations started peacefully and still went on peacefully in the morning hours until it was almost noon when students became violent. They destroyed a lot of the university property. Security officers and police had to come in and stop the bad behavior.

The students demonstrated over missing marks, delayed release of marks, abolishment of cooking in the hostels and increment of supplementary fee. A large number of students in the university are just proceeding from one year to the other without having their marks for the previous semesters. Students in their final year were very angry since missing marks are a hindrance to graduating.

On the abolishment of cooking in the hostels, the students claimed they cook because the food in the university’s mess is of low quality and expensive, unlike in other public universities. Students caught with any of kitchen-related items were being harassed, something that left them with much anger. https://atdigitalpress.news.blog/2020/01/20/ban-of-cooking-in-moi-university

The students mentioned that supplementary fee used to be Ksh.400 then it was increased at once to Ksh.1000. They were not happy about it stating there must be officials behind it and it is corruption.

The violence forced all activities in the institution and outside it to stop. A market by the name Talai, located immediately at the gate, had to stop functioning. All businesses were closed since the owners feared the students could start looting.

Due to the violence and misconduct, a memo was released from the office of the Vice Chancellor ordering the students to leave the school premises hence suspending learning. Students residing in the school hostels were required to move out their belongings. Learning was suspended until a date to be communicated by the institution.