By Makur Adut

In an apparent solidarity stance with their tutors, the Students Union at the Rumbek University of Science and Technology on Monday gave the Ministry of Finance a seven-day ultimatum to pay the ten months’ salaries and arrears of their academic staff.

The group threatened to mobilize students to match to the market should the ministry fail to pay the money within the time stated.

Sabit Job Reec, Guild President at the institution said: “We are here to present the concern of the students. Our concern is that we don’t have lectures in the University. We don’t have food on campus, and the cost of having no lectures is because the lecturers have laid down their tools. After all, they have not been paid for almost 10 months,” he said.

He added that if they had been paid the 10-month salary, they would have had the right to push them to teach in the lecture rooms.

“Their children are suffering and their families are suffering. We want the government to take that responsibility to pay them. We have given a week ultimatum that they should have to respond to us and today is a second call to the National Ministry of Higher Education and also the Ministry of Finance and Planning and the chancellor of all the Universities.”

“We are here stranded, we cannot die in our country when we have our rights. Since the first week of October, they had no food, they have no lectures, and they have no parents there who can support them particularly those who came from far locations of different states of South Sudan,” Reec said.

He said they were demanding the government to take the message seriously because if that message is not taken seriously, they would call on all the students to march to the market, and the effects of moving to the market would have negative impacts.

“When the students move to the market, they will demolish or destroy whatever things that are possessed by the national. So, we are controlling it as a union and as a guild president. We are controlling the students,” he said.

“We are calling the national ministry to take this responsibility to respond within 7 days and without that, we can go and call all the general assembly and all the students. You can remember, the whole population is not happy because they need their salary and if they need their salary it will not be only students to march to the market, the population will go to the market.”

Bhakita Philip, a student of Rumbek University said, “This thing is affecting us too much as we ladies, some are coming from far away, so we have no one here. It can give us bad things that we can do, which is not in our program.”

Another student, Pieng Panic requested the national government to consider the voice of the people, “We need education, and this education can not go forward when our lecturers are not given their rights. So, we need 10 months’ salary that has not been paid to the academic staff and non-academic staff of Rumbek University.”